The Masters of Time and Space
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU. The introduction of Faster than light technology, and a wormhole network changes humanities future, sending them on a journey to become the masters of time and space. Another Earth becomes the Time Lords story, but different. A crossover of sorts with other science fiction shows. Enjoy.
1. Chapter 1

**I don't know what it is about the Babylon 5 universe, but I think that it needs...more than it has. There's no variation in the technology, which I find irritating.**

**Okay, Star Trek and Stargate may've had every race have the same basics, but not always; In Star Trek Voyager, with a few exceptions most races had never seen a replicator, or a transporter, and there was Quantum Slipstream Drive, and the Vaadwaur controlled a massive empire through subspace corridors. Who else had it? Yes, I know the Vaadwaur were conquered, but still, who else in the galaxy knew about the corridors? Answer, no one.**

**In Doctor Who, the Time Lords are said to have the most advanced tech in the universe, yes I know their dead, but I love them anyway. They've given me a lot of ideas.**

* * *

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

Prologue - Revolution of Space.

April, 3rd, 2063.

The final years of the 21st century brought with it new changes, and not all of them good, but there were good things that came out of the events that followed. There were still those that wanted war, but those were madmen who wanted the impossible. Since the years passed by, there had been many die hard fanatics who believed Earth should follow other paths, but those were ridiculed because they were considered insane and absurd, and tensions were rising every day, and Earth needed something, something revolutionary to spark change. The first one being the invention of space travel. Some years ago, Earth discovered the lower sub strata of the universe, a domain where the normal laws of physics are changed and don't apply. The Space Agency, the only one of its kind to follow the research, had been founded to study ways for humanity to explore new worlds, to learn more of the universe. The Space agency building was set out in Britain, and it covered 7 acres of land. Colonel Carter marched through the corridors of the agency building, a smile on her face as she carried the final sheaf of papers. At last, it was finally ready to rise.

Marching into the control room, Carter handed the sheaf of reports to the Director. " Final report, sir," she said, unable to keep the smile off her face. " The ship is ready at last."

The Director, a short stout man in his early 40s, looked up from the report. " When can we go?" He asked.

Carter nodded, understanding the question. " We can go at anytime. We can use the new gravity impeller engine to push the ship into space, outside the atmosphere, and we don't need global positioning to worry about what direction the ship goes in. As soon as the ship exits the atmosphere, the thrusters and impulse engines can push the ship away from Earth, and initiate FTL."

The Director considered, the tensions on Earth were rising everyday, and something new was needed to change humanity and begin a new chapter in human history. But the faster than light project had taken in itself ten years, and the natives were becoming desperate at a junction; one branch led to war, and the other to a great future. The Director wanted the latter.

He nodded, " Get it done. Have the ship ready for launch by tonight."

Carter nodded, and left the room.

One of the most amazing things about human space travel was that the stereotypical image of a spacecraft was a rocket. Sputnik had been sent up on a rocket, so too had the other space explorers that came afterwards. Ever since World War 2, October 1942, rocket technology had been seen as the way to send masses and break free of the atmosphere and the gravitational pull of the Earth.

Carter stood with folded arms, gazing through the window at the launch site. The sleek silver body of Earth's first faster than light ship dominated the vista, all the workers in the site, reminding the physicist of ants swarming around the nest, preparing the ship on its first flight. Carter relaxed, the faster than light project had taken a lot out of her, countless tests and simulations with models to calculate the best and most secure form of faster than light travel.

Faster than light required warping space, like in Star Trek, and the subspace medium had the same basic properties seen in the series; there were numerous levels of subspace, and can be warped by high levels of energy.

Lieutenant Cox, the pilot selected for the mission out of hundreds of others, was trying to take deep calming breaths to calm himself. 30 years old, and his school teachers had told him he would never amount to anything. Look at me now, he mentally shouted, I'm gonna fly the first warp ship, and I don't care if you choke on your own words!

He turned to his co -pilots. " You guys ok?" He asked, trying to keep his voice level.

La Forge, his engineer smirked, his dark skin shinning in the light as he was wedged into his seat. The engineer savoured the sight of the pilot, and his fellow men, ready to take the Earth and the human race into the next level. La Forge and Cox had known each other for a long time, joined the Air Force at the same time, become firm friends, and for the first time, Cox had become what La Forge could claim was a hero.

" You bet," La Forge replied to Cox's question, and started checking over the engine. The matter-antimatter engine, powered by the dilithium crystals which had been mined on one of Uranus's moons, had been online for an hour, and it was ready to go.

Riker, the second co-pilot nodded, " When do we go?"

Cox checked his watch, and though he tried, he couldn't keep the enthusiam out of his voice. " One minute. Let's get started."

The three men started going over the prelaunch sequence. None of them were worried about it, it was just a last minute thing. " ATR setting?" Cox asked, now in pilot mode.

" Active," La Forge replied.

Cox turned to Riker, " Main bus?"

Riker flicked a switch, " Ready. All ok."

Cox nodded, and licking his dried lips, said, " Activate the impulse drive. Take us up on zero."

The countdown clock ticked down from one hundred, but it seemed to go on forever. Cox had to control his breathing again as the clock ticked its way down, the machine unaffected by the event.

Fianlly, the clock buzzed, and Cox pushed the lever and activated the impulse engine, the plasma leaving the ship forming the subspace field, and aided by the thrusters the ship started to rise.

Carter watched unblinkingly as the Phoenix rose. A tear leaked out of her right eye as she murmured as the ship reflected in her eyes, " Good luck, and god bless you."

" Oh wow!" Cox exclaimed in awe as he saw for the first time, the sight of Earth. You see the planet in pictures, the glowing, almost epheral glow of the blue oceans, the white of the clouds...it was breathtaking. Although all three of the crew had been trained for it, by using the best teachers and the knowledge that went back years since the mid 20th century the effects of space travel, none of the crew had ever lifted off this high before, but DVDs and holosnaps of early astronauts could describe in first hand detail the awesome beauty of Earth from space, and it left the three men gawping, awestruck.

They were broken out of their stupor by the communique from the Agency, asking if there was something wrong with the ship that was the reason why they were locked in orbit of the planet. That snapped them out of their stupor, and resignedly turning away from the vista beneath them, they set down to work.

" Engage impulse drive," Cox ordered La Forge, whilst he took the steer column and moved the ship away from the atmosphere ready for the warp jump.

The ship started shaking with the engineer calling out, " Plasma flow looking good, structural integrity resequencing, warp nacelles are charged and ready. Matter - antimatter ratio looking good. I think we're ready." La Forge finished.

Cox nodded, not looking back, " Keep an eye on the structural integrity, we haven't come all this way only to be crushed to the size of one of your fists. Engage!"

With that final word, all three men pushed down on the levers in front of them. It had been a design spec, that all three men instead of just the pilot should initiate the first warp ship, and send it off into the new era. It had been a decision that the higher ups had found appealing, and the pilots themselves.

The nacelles of the Phoenix glowed blue as the high energy started manipulating and warping the space in front and behind the ship, moving her forwards, like a sailing ship with wind billowing in her sails. Finally with a lurch, the power flow caused the ship to shoot forwards in a flash of light, sending it into warp.

The inertial dampeners that were installed on the Phoenix had been designed to take the brunt of high acceleration, but since no one had ever travelled at faster than light speeds there was no way to predict how fast they could travel, and the structual integrity and inertial dampeners were two of the most important systems the ship possessed since they regulated the amount of speed could crush and tear the Phoenix to shreds, this was top priority, and the scanners and computers were recording the amount of structural stress for Earth Space agency for the researchers to design new warp starships, and the warp flight also tested the inertial dampeners.

Unfortunately, the warp flight had the same effect as a rocket lifting off from a planet's surface; all three of the crew were crushed in their seats as the ship was propelled through space. Riker was locked in his seat, the acceleration was making his face muscles slack and his body was locked in his seat, but he managed to wriggle his hand across to his console, and started to manipulate the power grid into altering the inertial dampening system to compensate.

The dampeners were already operating at full capacity, but somehow Riker was able to divert more energy into the system, and the dampeners cut in and all three of the crew were able to sit up straight and move normally again.

" I think that's far enough. Disengage warp in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!" Cox said, moving his lever with the others. " Throttle back, lets see what's behind us."

The Phoenix dropped out of warp, the stars returning to normal as the ship turned back. In the distance shining brightly, was a blue shape.

" Earth." Riker whispered.

" It looks...tiny." La Forge commented.

A smile worked its way onto Cox's face. " It's gonna get so much bigger."

He had no idea how right he was.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The Passing Years.**

* * *

Warp changed Earth, and in the next 7 years since the flight of the Phoenix all the tensions died down, and humanity moved away from war and senselessness, and started to accept there was more to life than war. As the human race pushed deeper into space exploration, warp theory became an established science, and plans for warp 2 were being brought in.

The opening of the door to space brought in a number of colonies on the Moon, on Mars, which had water in abundance, and water generated in the atmosphere helped redevelop and revitalise the Martian environment, and gave rise to the Martian settlements, which in turn would develop into cities, and on various other bodies in space, and mining stations were established on the asteroids. In orbit above Earth, and Mars, three orbital tethers were constructed, each one growing larger and larger, and without the force of gravity to bring it down there was no limit to the size. In the 20 years since Earth developed space flight, warp 2 was cracked, and a year later so was warp 3 and warp 4. Warp 5 was planned, and the first warp 5 ships were sent out to discover and colonise new worlds, and to expand the knowledge of the galaxy. Later speeds of warp eight to warp 9 were attained. In the ten years that passed since the launch of the first thirty starships, Earth's knowledge of the universe expanded, and with the discovery of the strange pylons located deep in space, that knowledge yielded two things. First, aliens existed, and secondly, there was more to subspace than warp travel.

" What're we looking at?" Reed asked Cartwright.

The screen was showing what looked like the structure of the planet with the core in the centre with the mantle and the crust, but the crust resembled black space with white dots for stars.

" Subspace, or at least the domain of subspace that aliens use for faster than light travel," Cartwright said, before he tapped a new sequence into the computer. The view changed, sending the original view into what looked like a massive honeycomb. " Ever since we discovered subspace, there have been questions. Is this all there is? What else is there to subspace? Is subspace just for warp travel? Every single warp ship, including the Phoenix, have sensors that can detect subspace distortions, and during the first warp flight, this was detected." Cartwright touched a button, and the image changed with the time stamp showing it to be the same date of the launch of the Phoenix, and it showed space to be warped, but there was something else in the wake, showing lines of subspace distortion, clear when they were closer to the level of the Phoenix, but as they left the level of the Phoenix, they became less clear, but somehow they seemed sharp.

Cartwright pointed at these same distortions, " These were once thought of as subspace distortions, but as we developed faster and more powerful ships and our knowledge of warp travel grew, we realised there were more levels of subspace. We have spent nearly three decades working on a warp theory that can take us beyond our galaxy, manipulating the lower levels, but thanks to the pylons the Drake discovered we've learnt how to open portals into deeper level subspace. Our engineers have taken the pylons apart, and this is how they work. They tear a hole in subspace, and seal it again when the portal is closed, but the domain the ships enter is awash with gravimetric eddies, not the nicest place to enter, but we have found that the way to open portals in subspace into deeper levels."

Reed frowned, " Then how do we reach them?"

" I dunno. But I do know this, when the Drake opened the portal into the subspace domain, the scanners picked up a tremendous amount of energy being used. That sort of thing is wasteful, and there are complications. The first is obvious, what would happen if the power flow was cut off mid opening? The ship would probably be destroyed.

The second one is navigation. Our scans of the subspace domain indicates that the gravimetric eddies are hard to pinpoint and there are no landmarks to allow for charting. If that's typical then we need a beacon system of some sort to aid in navigation, and the fleet have detected what look like beacons, and our first contacts have given us knowledge of the nature of subspace, or subspace in the way they see it. When our engineers took the jump gate pylons to pieces, we discovered a mineral that acts as a catalyst, similar to gunpowder in a cannon, and generates the energy needed." Cartwright explained.

Singh leant forward. He was a tall lean man of Indian descent, and his dark eyes glinted. " What would you suggest?"

" Instead of ripping a hole in space, we push a ship into it," Cartwright said, " and this is how." He pressed a control, and a simulation appeared. It showed a ship generating a warp field, but this warp field was different. It was narrowly focused, pointing forwards like a needle or a sword. The ship then seemed to generate a flowing tunnel in space.

" What is it?" Reed asked.

Cartwright sat down, and tapped the table with his fingers. Finally he said, " The newest theory of space travel is that space is moving. The Transwarp theory, but there are so many problems with making the whole thing work. The formula has enhanced our warp engines many times over for the same level of energy which they use, but the jump gates allowed for equations which deeper levels can be accessed." He pointed at the simulations. " That's the slipstream drive. It generates a narrowly focused warp drive at the quantum level of subspace, and generates the conduit that takes the form of a wormhole like corridor from start to finish."

" How does it work?" Singh asked, his voice demanding a more thorough explanation.

" The warp field burrows down into a deeper level of subspace, and the field is augmented by the deflector dish of the starship. The dish takes energy from the quantum drive and routes that energy through the dish, creating the slipstream with bands of energy. The warp formula is similar to that of the formula of space is moving, and the newest transwarp equations."

" How long before we can build one?"

Cartwright sighed, " That's the bad news. Since the warp scale had to be redrawn because of this, it's gonna take longer because we need to develop a slipstream formula under the right levels of speed. We'll also need a power level that is significantly higher than that of antimatter. Experiments shown indicate that subspace energy is rich with it. We going to need to research ways of taking advantage of it."

" Then again by that point there may be other propulsion theories that aren't so complicated." Reed pointed out.

Cartwright nodded. Reed had a point. There was a scientist that was working on a transwarp drive that moved ships instantly through space without a rate of acceleration, and the slipstream drive used a vast amount of acceleration. It was a question of which one.

* * *

The Excelsior class starship had been on the drawing boards for the newly formed Starfleet to take advantage of high warp velocities for a long time, especially after a transwarp breakthrough that involved pushing the starship already at warp deeper into subspace. The experiments and research had taken Earth Starfleet 30 years of practical knowledge of warp propulsion. Quantum slipstream drive was still on the drawing board, having hit upon various snags that called into question the practicalities of such technology. The issue with an adequate power source was one such matter, as was the matter of hull materials. Quantum slipstream put a lot of strain on the hulls of starships, even though with immensely rigid hulls and structural integrity fields, but it was also the computer systems that was an issue. In slipstream, the ship would be buffeted by the subspace speeds, but there was the matter of regulating the energy flow to the deflector dish, and the navigational systems, both would be put under tremendous strain.

Slipstream travel was presently on hold as scientists worked on the problem.

But the quest for transwarp drive, the holy grail of propulsion technology was still going on, and theories were being put ahead with modifying the warp fields already in use. It was known already that warp fields distorted the layers of subspace, but what if you used a bubble to push the ship deeper into subspace? Well that theory had been tested, and there had been a larger increase in speed, but the discoveries were still a long way from developing a fully operational transwarp drive.

The Excelsior class had been built as part of the research. The hulls were longer and the deflector dish and the warp nacelles were arranged differently than those of the older starships. The hull geometry was part of the experiment to give Starfleet ships a larger subspace torque, and to increase the level of speed in the warp engines.

The warp experiments were proving to be a sucess, but then the flagship of the Excelsior class, the Excelsior, encountered something that would become the foundations of the future of the human race...

Captain Katzel of the Excelsior was admiring the way the stars were shooting past his ship as she rode in her warp field, and judging from the readouts on the console built into his command chair, the engines were working at peak efficiency. Katzel smiled as he took pride in surveying his bridge. The Excelsior class starships bridge was larger than that of the NX and Constitution and Daedalus class starships. Dominating the centre of the bridge was the captain's chair, in front of him was the viewscreen, and between them was the helm and ops consoles. All around him were science, communication, engineering and the bridge feed for the astrometic laboratory. Behind the captains's chair, and in a closed off area, was the tactical and operations room, where tactical decisions and briefings were made. Doors branched off to the turbolift shafts that lead throughout the starship, and the captain's ready room and the briefing room.

Katzel was distracted from his musings by an alarm from the engineering and science stations. " What is it?" Katzel asked, jumping to his feet and striding over to them.

The officer in charge of engineering was frantically trying to make sense of the readings coming through on his console. " It's the warp field, sir, its like it's being attracted to something."

" Confirmed," the helm officer called out, trying to regain control of the thrusters and impulse engines in conjunction with the warp fields. There was a noticeable shift in the acceleration. The Excelsior was moving faster. " The engines are drawing us out of control."

" Captain," the science officer Porter, a girl with short black hair called. " I'm picking up a subspace anomaly, and its getting closer."

" Is that the source?"

The officer nodded, " It seems that way, sir. It doesn't match anything on record."

Suddenly the whole viewscreen seemed to explode, and the acceleration eased off. Katzel gaped at the sight of what was on his viewscreen. It was a tunnel, a long multihued tunnel lined with reddish yellow lines, that seemed to ring the corridor at intervals that seemed to carry the Excelsior through like a fast moving river. They passed by what seemed like junctions with branches breaking off at various points.

Just then they came to a junction that branched away from the present course of the Excelsior, wherever they were. Katzel turned to face the science station again. " Lieutenant Porter, analysis?"

Porter checked her readings. " We're in what looks like a subspace corridor sir, and we're being carried through space, but there're some strange neutrino emissions and quantum flux readings. I've just tried to get a fix using Starfleet Cartography, but the transmission wasn't sent."

" So we can't contact Earth?" Katzel asked stating the obvious.

" No. But I can tell you that we're inside a subspace domain. I'm trying to work on a way to -" She stopped when she saw the display. " Captain, the warp field is making the corridor unstable. We need to cut down our warp field before the corridor collapses." Porter looked up at the captain in alarm. Katzel studied the readout; it looked like the ship was inside a thin tube, and the tube was bulging outwards, threatening to break open. Katzel's head shot up and fixed a stare at the helmsman. " Drop out of warp to...factor 4. Do you think that will be better?" He asked, looking down at Porter.

Porter shook her head, " I don't know." Turning to face the helmsman, who'd been overhearing the whole thing, she instructed, " Drop us out of warp slowly, we're at Warp 9.993 now, drop us out until we reach 8. I'll keep an eye on the corridor to see if it returns to normal."

The helmsman nodded, and did as he was told. There was a noticeable change in the acceleration, and the helmsman called out. " We've dropped to warp...8.99."

Porter scrunched up her face and shook her head. " No, still not enough."

" Warp 6?" The helmsman asked, twisting his head round to the science station.

Porter shook her head. " No."

The helmsman frowned as he watched the speedometer on his console, as the level dropped more and more. Finally, when the level dropped below warp 5.1, Porter called out. " That's perfect. The corridor's stable."

Katzel leant forward, watching the screens on Porters console. The science station was collecting more data than the viewscreen, and his eyes caught Porter's frowning face looking at one monitor in particular. The captain turned his gaze to see it.

It was a typical monitor, but it showed other readings. Katzel was familiar with subspace corridors, since Earth sometimes created them artifically, but he was aware of the data collected on them. This corridor seemed somehow different. Then he noticed why; there seemed to be a space/time distortion in the corridor. Katzel jabbed his finger at it. " Why would there be a space/time distortion inside a subspace corridor?"

Porter shook her head, " I've been monitoring the corridor we've travelling in. There seem to be...nodes, verteron particles, tunneling particles...and subspace corridors do not have them. Subspace corridors don't have curvature, and this does. There's also no dark energy present on scans. Subspace corridors are bands of subspace energy overlapped together to form a solid tunnel."

Katzel frowned, " What do you think it is?"

Porter turned to face him, " The quantum fluctuation and neutrino emissions are a giveaway, sir. I think we've entered a wormhole," her left eye moved to the viewscreen, where two more junctions had started to veer off. " A network of natural wormholes."

" Hold on," the communications officer turned in her chair. " I'm not an expert, but aren't there no stable wormholes?"

Porter shrugged, " There's been no way to tell. But if these wormholes have existed for centuries, then we've discovered the first stable wormholes known to exist. I just need to figure out how to - ah, Captain, I've just found what looks like an exit."

Katzel twisted to face the helm, " Head for it, helm."

" Aye, sir."

The exit was a bright light, and when they exited Katzel saw by way of the timer that only 15 minutes had passed. " We're back in normal space," the helmsman reported with a sigh of relief.

Katzel nodded, " Do you know where we are?"

The helmsman worked at his console, then he slowed down and regarded the console with disbelief. He then entered the same sequence again, same result. Katzel watched this with apprehension. Surely we can't be so far away. We were only in the wormhole for 15 minutes. Deciding to get to the heart of the matter, Katzel snapped, " Report!"

The helmsman jumped, then he relaxed and relayed his findings. " Sir, if the sensors are working, we're 3 million light years from home."

In the silence on the bridge, the helm officer carried on, " We're in the Triangulum galaxy."


	3. Chapter 3

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The " Underspace " wormhole network.**

* * *

**6 months later.**

* * *

Admiral Phillips, the C-in C of Starfleet, and a number of scientists were surprised that they had been brought to one of Earth's many astrometic laboratories. One of them tapped him on the shoulder. " Why are we here?" He asked, though the admiral didn't reply, he had just seen a surprising trio; Captain Daniel Katzel, of the Excelsior and a woman wearing a blue tunic with scientific insignia, and Admiral Fisher, the head of Starfleet Science.

The two admirals greeted each other warmly. " Ron," Fisher shook his head wryly as he grinned at his friend. " How long has it been?"

" It's been 12 years, Bob. What's happening?" Philips asked, a curious frown on his face.

" You'll find out. Please, take a seat." Fisher indicated a free seat.

When everyone was seated, Fisher turned and introduced the scientists who didn't know each other, and Philips realised some of them were noted stellar cartographers and propulsion experts, then he turned to face Captain Katzel and his science officer. " This is Captain Katzel, and his science officer, Erin Porter, they'll do most of the presentation. Do you want to begin Captain?" Fisher asked, turning to face Katzel.

Katzel stood up, and walked up to the massive holographic screen that dominated the room. In front of it was a stand and a circular dias Philips recognised at once as a holographic display unit. It would generate a hologram that was right in front, be it a person for messaging, or a starmap. Stellar cartographers used them to help them chart larger areas of the exploration zone, Philips had seen them in use many times. They also presented a way of communicating over vast distances, although it was disconcerting to witness a starship captain on another's bridge over a considerable distance.

Katzel stood by the podium, inserting a memory acid chip into the reader but he didn't turn it on. He gestured for Porter to come and stand next to him. There was no way he was going to do all this by himself. He hated speaking to audiences be they admirals or cadets. He glanced over the crowd. They all looked curious as to the reason they were there, and none of them seemed bored just yet. Frankly he couldn't see them bored with what they were going to tell them. " Thank you for coming," Katzel began. " We're sorry we had to bring you here like this with no explanation, but there are good reasons for it."

Taking a deep breath, Katzel carried on. " 6 months ago, my ship the Excelsior, fitted with the latest advances of the new subspace warp bubble drive technology, encountered a phenomenon outside Earth space." He pressed a control on the podium, and the entire screen showed the tunnellike form of the wormhole. All the scientists learnt forward, and started talking to themselves, gabbling excitedly. Katzel waited for them to silence themselves, he had been around scientists for long enough to know when they needed to let off steam, and make theories and hypotheses and let them come out of it themselves.

Katzel stood out of the way, dragging Porter with him so then they could have a better view of the wormhole, its structure, its nodes for support, the junction points that branched off. From his new position, Katzel could carry on with the presentation before he transferred over to his science officer. He glanced at her, she seemed to be holding her own, but he could tell she was nervous. " Excelsior was travelling at maximum warp, heading back to Earth with the results of the latest tests on the engines. For some reason, our engines interracted with the entrance of the wormhole when we shot into it."

One of the scientists, a woman wearing her red hair in a bun, stood up, " Excuse me, but how can you be sure its a wormhole?"

Porter took that as her cue, her nervousness pushing itself aside. " That's what I thought at first, but further analysis discovered that the space/time curvature was that indicative of a wormhole, subspace corridors are tunnels through subspace, and aside from their presence inside this deep level domain of subspace, the wormholes didn't bend it like a corridor does. Also there were also two other giveaways. The first one was the presence of verteron particles, and these same particles seem to form nodes, support structures inside the conduits. The second was the neutrino count, and subspace corridors do not radiate neutrinos." Porter leant over to touch the podium controls, and a smaller screen appeared. It showed black empty space with a small green grap in it. " This micro wormhole was discovered 34 years ago, and it served as the perfect study for wormholes. It gave Starfleet science invaluable data on wormhole theory, and disproved and confirmed ideas on wormhole structure. Wormholes are basically warped space, with subspace in the middle. Micro probes sent through the wormhole scanned the internal structure, and the particle scanners have since then been recalibrated by Science, and stellar cartography labs are programmed to look for wormholes."

Porter touched another control, fast forwarding the recording, showing the end of the wormhole and highlighted the recording's time stamp. " Excelsior spent 15 minutes inside the wormhole," she continued. " But we learnt a great deal more on our way out." Porter took a deep breath, and announced, " We travelled to the Triangulum galaxy, 3 million light years away."

Porter and Katzel both waited for the scientists to calm down. They'd both known that that announcement would cause pandemonium, but they decided to wait for the noise to die down. The astrometic data on the screen was proof they were not lying, and Porter was grateful for that because she didn't need her career ruined by a controversal lie.

" Our scans indicate that the wormholes can be opened via the tachyonic impulse of a warp drive, which is how our ship was attracted to the wormhole mouth," Porter said at last, silencing the scientists who were busy talking excitedly about the discovery, and she felt bad for breaking up the debate. She knew that the discovery of a network of wormholes was something to be talked about. " The wormhole we traversed inside was long, and we managed to chart part of it." Porter tapped a control, and another image appeared, this time as a three dimensional hologram in the table as well as on the screen behind them. Porter and Katazel walked over to the map in the wormholes appeared like the strands in a bush, or the branches of a massive tree; they looped each other, and even looped over each other, and they interlinked themselves, forming junctions and connecting solar system after solar system together. The interesting thing about the tubes was the fact that not all of them went into normal space, those entrances went onto the borders of the solar systems. The scientists noticed that the gravity of planets, moons, stars, even pulsars and gas giants didn't affect the wormholes in any way. In fact, the wormholes seemed to go through them.

The subspace domain other races in the Milky way called hyperspace was so close to the domain of normal space that gravimetric anomalies caused by the mass of planets and stars that the existence of other subspace layers that were unaffected was considered a goldmine by scientists.

The starchart of the wormholes was unique in three ways, first the map was vast, and it was incredbly detailed, showing the expansive vastness of the wormholes, showing how many conduits there were, joining solar systems together. Second, the map showed that the wormholes that went into the planets seemed to stay there, almost like they had been locked into position. That made no sense, planets and stars moved. How could the wormholes not move? The third way was the size of the map itself. If it had been a network of subspace corridors then the map would be considerably smaller, not covering not one, but nearly three galaxies. The map should've showed nothing but wormholes, but it didn't. It showed solar systems only subspace telescopes could see distantly.

" How did you get so much detail?" One of the cartographers whispered.

Porter shook her head, " I don't know. We just did. Excelsior was only inside the wormhole for 15 minutes," she reminded them. " But when the results of the scans from astrometics came, our astrometic and science departments on board ship, and in the astrometic observatories here on Earth and around the commonwealth were as surprised as we were."

" Hold on," Philips cut in, holding his hands up. " How many people know about this?"

" The Excelsior crew, the astrometic and science departments of Starfleet, and that's it, except for you, now." Porter could see the news didn't make the C - in - C's mood any better, but she had to make him see some sense. " Admiral, it wasn't my decision, but Starfleet Science needed to know more before the announcement. I've been working for 6 months with scientists, and we've been studying the wormholes closest to Earth, and we've found that these wormholes," she counted off on her fingers, " cross through solar systems, even through planets and stars without any gravitational anomaly. Excelsior went through 7 planets and 4 suns on her 15 minute trip through the wormhole leading outside our own galaxy," one finger, " only have a few entrances and exit points in normal space. There are eight such entrances in our solar system, and we've confirmed them in distant systems, but not in the same number. The same number, and also outside out solar system are entrances and exits where planets and suns do not reside, and there are no gravity bodies in space for light years. " Another finger. " They cross galaxies in minutes." A third finger. " The wormholes are easy to chart, something that's unprecedented, almost as though the people who constructed them wanted them charted and detected." Another finger down, and Porter grinned at their stunned looks. " Yeah, you heard me right. There are few quantum fluctuations that you would expect to find in a normal wormhole. The wormhole entrance and exit that we found opened of our own accord, but when we sent a ship on sublight to open one of the entrance ways in our system, the entrance did not open. That's because there was no tachyon warp pulse. We assumed that the presence of the ship would open the entrance, but it didn't. Clearly whoever constructed this vast network knew what they were doing, and wanted to keep this secret from the rest of the universe."

" Who created it?" Philips asked quietly.

Porter shook her head, " There's no way of telling, but whoever did it did a very good job, and clearly Earth was the hub of the network. For some reason, no other solar system has more than three wormhole exits and entrance ways."

" Any idea why?"

" No. It's a mystery."

Ericsson, a senior propulsion expert stood up. " What does this mean for our transwarp and quantum slipstream experiments? If we can use these wormholes to traverse the universe, and explore the universe faster..."

Fisher folded his fingers, steepling them. " I see no reason why we shouldn't expand on our transwarp experiments. Transwarp can help us enter other galaxies, set up colonies that we can use to explore the network. Our transwarp theories should work fine and add to our accomplishments. We might need them one day."

Philips sat back, " How did the Excelsior return to this galaxy?"

Katzel chuckled, " We spent a week in that galaxy, admiral. We scanned the entrance and exit points, and we evaluated the wormhole network from there, but when we tried to reopen the entrance by activating a warp tachyon pulse, it didn't open, defining an entrance for it. Our astrometics lab brought in the results of our 15 minutes, and in just 15 minutes we had charted a galaxy and a short amount of another. We studied the whole thing, and learnt the network is artificial, but there was no way of telling who built it. We spent 3 days evaluating that before we realised we had found another entrance just two days away at maximum speed, so we set a course. The wormhole we went to opened as soon as we went inside. We plotted a course to go through two junctions into the original corridor that took us to Triangulum. We stayed inside the corridors longer this time in order to reach home faster When we got back, we found that sending out subspace pulses could map out the network faster than simply going inside and hoping not to get lost."

Porter jumped in, " Those pulses we sent out helped map out the network light years away from Earth, bouncing off a galaxy further away, and even isolating distant solar systems we've never even travelled too."

Porter tapped a button, and a picture of a subspace observatory appeared. The observatory was of a type that studied subspace domains, sending pulses down into the deepest layers of subspace to study the structure of the universe. Only this one waited for a starship to open a wormhole entrance, and emit the pulse from there.

" This observatory is on the outer most fringers of our space, and we sent the pulse outwards. Scanners in other parts of our space picked up the pulse, providing us with communication." She looked around the room. " I think that having transwarp drive can send ships out into other galaxies, where they can then set up subspace pulse stations to map the network faster."

This was a time when Erin Porter's rise to prominence would only just occur. Everyone agreed with her. The transwarp project would go on, and plans for transwarp starships sent to other galaxies to begin charting the universe would come in.

Only the people around the room did not know it, but they were about to step into their own future...


	4. Chapter 4

**Masters of Time and Space.**

**4 years later.**

* * *

Erin Porter was standing inside one of the largest astrometic laboratories ever devised by Starfleet. In the years that passed since the wormhole network, designated Underspace. It was a fitting name for the network, Porter mused. It reminded her vividly of the Underground railways of London, the Paris metro and the subways of the American cities. All around her screens hummed as the latest maps for the network appeared on the screens, but there were no new charts of the latest galaxy showing the wormholes and this part of the intragalactic network.

All the time she was nervous of being inside a strange new galaxy. Messier 99, a spiral galaxy over 50 million light years away, had been reached only a year ago by transwarp. The new transwarp system didn't involve traversing massive amounts of speed. Instead, the warp physicists had gone back to basics, and created a warp theory that folded warped space on itself at the appropriate subspace layer, allowing for instantaneous travel. Porter had arrived to supervise the construction of ten observatories, 13 colonies and the distribution of numerous vessles to set up the appropriate pulses. Starships were already identifying the entrance and exit points of the wormholes, but they were not ready yet.

In the four years that had passed, dozens of galaxies had been charted, and in that time numerous alien races and worlds, technologies that were more advanced than humanities, and even more advanced as the Minbari, the most advanced race in their home galaxy that humans knew of by reputation alone, existed, and it had taken Earth and Starfleet at long time to set up enough fleets to traverse this amount of space. Some races were friendly and helped humans in these galaxies gather their knowledge. In their home galaxy, Porter knew that dozens of First Contacts had taken place, between the Abbai, the Drazi, the Brakiri and the Markabs, but aside from a few exchanges that was it. Starfleet's priority one mission was the exploration of space, and alien cultures came in between. It just wasn't a major priority, alien races were met but there was nothing more than that. It was kind of tragic, but it was necessary. Only a few races traded with humans, and not always for technologies.

In the four years Starfleet had been exploring other galaxies, they had needed to open up more with other races, just not too much. They had needed to wait an entire year for the transwarp breakthrough, but in the meantime they learnt more about the wormhole network. The hypothesis that it was artificial was confirmed, and somehow only humans were allowed to use it. Porter wondered why that was, why were humans the only ones to utilise the wormholes?

She turned to face another screen, this one showing a holographic image of a section of the wormhole network with a small science vessel inside. It had been in that wormhole for over a month, surveying and studying the structure of the wormhole. For light years around there was no sign of any other Earth vessel, all captains had been given a transmission saying that some science vessels were studying regions of the wormhole network and that all ships entering and leaving the network should not traverse that route.

Erin smiled, her eyes moving from one screen to another. A booth in the back of the room lit up, and with a thumming sound that beat three times, a technician appeared, blinked, then went on his way. Starfleet R&D had finally perfected teleportation technology, and now people could move through space, transported through matter beams that broke down their quantum potentialities instead of their atomic structures. They'd discovered the technology on an actual Dyson Sphere 2 years ago, in the Sunflower galaxy, a good 37 million light years away. Quantum dating indicated that the sphere was 800,000 years old, making it one of the oldest structures humans had ever found. It was one of the greatest finds in history.

When the language and hieroglyphs inside were translated, with a similarity to the ancient Norse runes found on Earth, they found that the species were known as the Asgard, and that they had been forced to construct the Dyson sphere when the resources of their homeworld had been depleted. The Asgard, an ancient and benevolent race, explored the universe, and fought many enemies. They had kept their homeworld and colonies secret from other races, understandably afraid that their knowledge and people would be destroyed. Their technologies relied on a combination of minerals - neutronium and trinium, combined with organic molecules, the formula was now in the hands of R&D. The Asgard had become extinct a thousand years in the past, just after they had made contact with Earth and shaped the Viking culture, but they had left behind incredibly advanced technologies, and their database was still being examined. As far as Earth knew, no other race seemed to have teleportation technology of anykind, and yet here it was common.

The technologies being examined were defensive and offensive in nature, and ion cannons were being installed on every human ship, planet, and starbase. Ion cannons seemed to be among the most powerful weapons the Asgard possessed, with the exception of the plasma beam weapons. That was good, many a ship had almost been attacked because the most powerful weapons used were plasma bolters and laser and photonic torpedoes. Earth possessed plasma weapons, just crude ones, but the Asgard technology was thousands of years more advanced and they had had time to work on them.

Another Starfleet officer approached her. " Excuse me, Lieutenant Porter?" When Erin turned, she found herself looking into the face of a man of Oriental descent with the rank of ensign on his uniform. " Yes?" She asked as a formality, she knew why he was here.

She was right.

" The ships are in position, we're waiting for your permission to generate the pulses."

Erin walked over to the panel where the screens showing the layout of the network mapping would take place. Thousands of observatories, planets and ships had watched as screens similar to this one would map out the network, and the location in the galaxies the pulses would be sent. The screen showed instead just a picture of the Sunflower galaxy with no trace of wormholes, the only clues to their existence being the transponder signals of the starships about to generate the pulses. More detailed and lengthy observation of the wormholes would take place in the next month when the pulses had done their work.

" Do it." She ordered, pulling herself back to the present.

The order went out, and the wormholes opened, and Erin had the satisfaction of watching as the pulses sent through the wormhole network suddenly went outwards, shaping the conduits, the junctions, the loop manifolds and the planets they passed through. Erin Porter felt pride go through her; 500, 000 galaxies had been charted already by Starfleet and civilian exploration outfits, and exploration and scientific programs were booming every day with knowledge of new cultures and astronomical objects, distantly observed in the past but easily readable now, and colonies connected by the wormholes were providing insights into life in other galaxies.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**A discovery in Tempusium.**

* * *

Nuclear research institutes still provided great deals of information, and new ones sprouted out all the time since the discovery of the wormhole network, since Earth only possessed a finite number of radioactive materials for experimentation. Thanks to warp flight, nuclear physics had boomed again with scientists sending specialised solar probes into stars, energy beams analogious to the laser studying the effects of binary pulsars, radioactive nebulas and samples of the same nebulas and sun beams - lasers beamed through space to touch the sun without needing to build a massively protected spacecraft to ride the heat and gravity of a star.

They also ran experiments, and Earth's mandate was to make them as unusual and as illogical as possible, just to ask more challenging questions of the universe, which is probably the reason why no other species, just humans ran the experiment to mix solar matter with other elements in a controlled fusion experiment.

The Institute was in space, outside a solar system and linked to the home colony worlds of a solar system of eight. All the better to safeguard innocent lives in the face of a careless accident that can destroy a planet. In space there were technologies that could protect an installation such as this, and people could easily be beamed off in case of an accident. Not on a planet where space tech was so crude that even journeying to their closest neighbour was such a long job it may as well be never. In the four years since the mapping of the wormhole network, and the surveying of dozens of planets where new minerals were discovered, and the transportation tech of the Asgard, dozens of new elements had appeared, as well as artificial elements. Carolinum-1.4, an isotope with a half life of 30 days. The Institute had decided to use a transporter beam to beam an isotope of C-1.4 and Quantium 40, the mineral found in jump gates, and see what happened. Scientists expected that since both elements already produced immense amounts of power, they would generate even more.

It was purely an energy experiment.

But it went differently.

* * *

The President of the Earth Commonwealth was an unassuming woman in her early 40s. Under her time in office, Starfleet had mapped and colonised dozens of galaxies in such a short amount of time that many people, including some in the senate, were becoming concerned that Earth was moving too fast. Fortunately they had the knowledge of dozens of species to go through, and they had scientists building on that knowledge of various races.

In the meantime she had to entertain new news of different developments. It was sometimes a curse being a president. The President was presently entertaining 2 scientists, one carrying a holocron and a black box, though whether it was plastic or simple metal or glass, the president couldn't tell, and at once her curiosity was aroused.

" What do you have for me, gentlemen?" She asked, recognising the one holding the box as Randall, a nuclear physicist, and the one holding the holocron as Swedish scientist called Bjurman.

Randall placed the box on her desk and opened it up, and carefully he took out a jar. The president recognised it as a jar for radioactive materials. Inside the jar was a green crystal, that glittered and seemed to glow like there was a tiny light bulb in it, and picked out the lines in the lattice. The crystal seemed to be a cross between dilithium and simple quartz.

" What is it?" She asked.

Bjurman sat down and steepled his hands together, he was a balding man in his early 50s, but his mind was still as sharp as steel. " A week ago, the Nuclear Institute of Research funded an experiment to create a new form of alchemy. You're aware of our research?" He asked, peering closely at the president.

The president nodded. The NIR was one of the largest research units in the commonwealth. They were the ones responsible for the influx of information on nuclear reactions in a star, and also how to siphon off solar matter. Their discoveries had answered many questions, and raised some more new ones about the nature of the universe.

Bjurman carried on with the president's nod of an answer, it was good enough for him. Everyone on Earth knew what the institute did. " We combined C-1.4, dilithium, Q-40, mercury, decathlium, neutronium, trinium, and leptonium."

" Isn't decathlium the mineral that allows for anti-grav plating? And neutronium and trinium-?" The President trailed off.

" Decathlium radiates gravitons when exposed to gravimetric energies, yes," Bjurman replied with a nod and smile that the president wasn't a braindead fool. " The Asgard used a combination of neutronium and trinium in their technology, forming a compound. Our other researchers are already experimenting with both minerals, and have found a greater improvement in the performance of recorded technologies, and the Asgard computer core's giving us ideas of where to take the research. Leptonium is the mineral that stops neutrinos from passing through it, and converting the energy of their attempted passing into energy. We took the minerals and combined them inside a nuclear fusion reactor. We used a transportation beam to place the materials inside when we got it into full power."

Randall took over, " I was there inside the lab." He said, and the president believed him; the scientist was radiating a joy that she had come to recognise. " We beamed the materials inside the fusion sun and used a subspace field to see what would happen. There was a massive flash of green, like the room had exploded with green light, then the fusion ball died down. When we tried to enter the radiation count was found to be in excess of 340,000 units. We didn't dare go inside, but it took over 3 hours, surprisingly enough, for the radioactivity to die down enough for us to enter. When we got inside, we found this." He pointed at the crystal inside the jar. " We've gotta keep it inside the jar. It's rad count may be lower than it was when the process was done, but I can tell you, when we took an atom of it to expose to a cell, there was a cancer like I can't tell you." He shook his head.

" Why did you expose it to a cell?" The president asked patiently, wanting them to get to the point.

" We wanted to see its effects on human tissue. It generates both gamma and theta radiation, and it's highly toxic when its first created. The blast of theta rays was immense. That jar's the strongest we've got."

The president regarded the jar with some trepidation, but she saw the forcefield was online. They were safe.

" Okay, but what's so special about this material?" She asked.

Bjurman replied, " We placed it inside a matter-antimatter reaction chamber, and exposed it to antimatter particles. There was a massive rising of energy in the process, delivering 50 times more energy than dilithium."

The president leant forward in her seat. One of the troubles of operating a space faring culture was the need for minerals to run that fleet, all of them, and send them off on their respective assignments. There had been experiments in harnessing subspace, and Q-40 powered reactors were in use to balance out the antimatter - matter reactions, but it was not enough. The discovery of the Asgard had opened the doors to neutrino ion generators, and the tech to harness subspace existed in their hands, but it would take years to fully understand the principles. " Can you mass produce it in that case?"

Randall sighed. He knew of the power demand for starships being sent out through the underspace network, and he knew that power demands were common in unsurveyed galaxies. " We could," he said, " but we would need dilithium crystals, big or small, it doesn't matter which. We'd be back to square one trying to come up with the appropriate amounts of minerals."

The president sighed warily, " What does it do?"

Bjurman inserted the holocron, and at once the holodias came on, showing an experiment using the green mineral. " We ran it through chemistry experiments; acids to burn it down, trying to convert it into an oxide, the lot. Nothing worked, so we started exposing it to various forms of energies." He went silent as the experiment came on. The President had witnessed many a subspace energy experiment to recognise a subspace field generator when she saw one, and there were also a number of light technologies, including old fashioned ray experiments. There was also a small box located inside the field, where a scientist was placing a small chunk of the green mineral. The experiment resembled a small sphere, with the subspace generator taking the form of two rings, one horizontal and one vertical, with light beaming through the box, only to hit an array of mirrors. The president recognised part of the experiment; the box was in fact a calibrator, a device that measured the quantum relationship between light and gravity. What was it doing in the experiment? Randall saw the president's surprise. He stopped the recording briefly to explain. " Remember, we used decathlium in the fusion experiment. We were just measuring the graviton reading." The president nodded, understanding now, and Randall continued with the recording and sat back.

Another startling thing was the presence of a tiny object, one of the scientists brought it infront of the camera. It was a marble. The person holding it placed it on a special metal plate. One of the scientists threw the stereotypical switch, and the blue light of the subspace experiment came on. The fields were activated, and the beams of light penetrated the subspace field, entering the box and obviously hitting the mirrors inside. The reading on the calibrator shot up, and then there was a minute flash of green light, and the marble vanished. The switch was thrown into the opposite direction, shutting off the energy. It reappeared a minute later after the experiment had been turned off.

Before the president could comment on it, the holocron changed showing the same lab, same equipment, but the marble had gone, replaced instead by a stopwatch. One of the scientists in the room picked it up and held it, next to an identical stopwatch that was synchronised precisely with the other one. The stopwatch was placed on the metal plate, and the switch was thrown again. This time, the power was left off for longer. The time stamp read that 4 minutes had passed since the switch had been thrown. After 5 minutes, the switch was thrown again, and the stopwatch reappeared. When one of the scientists reached out to pick it up and studied the face, the president saw the confusion, then excitement. She wondered what was on the screen. Then she saw what it was, and held the watch which hadn't been used in the experiment beside the one that had, comparing them. The watch that had been left out of the experiment was now showing 6 minutes, 34 seconds had passed, but the one inside the experiment read only...2 minutes, 34 had passed. How was that possible? She glanced at the scientists. Bjurman turned off the holocron.

Randall took pity on her, " The watch is the first human time traveller. When we beamed light inside, we also beamed inside energy. The scanners inside the lab were Asgard. We've had Asgard technology for a while, but we're still trying to work out how they work properly. They're so finely tuned. Anyway, the scanners picked up a kind of particle that exists in time itself, called chronons. We believe the light and the subspace energy, channeled through the mineral, sent the stopwatch, and the marble through time."

The president couldn't believe it. If it was true..." You've invented a time machine?" She whispered.

Bjurman shook his head, " Not a perfect one. We're still running experiments on the remainder of the mineral we created, trying to find a more practical way of devising a more viable time travel method. It might take some time. We've already learnt how to slow time down inside a field, reversed the polarity to access the past. A fortnight ago, I lost an old family coin. When the experiment was made, the coin appeared. We're trying to work on a way to sending people through time. It's slow, but we'll get there."

By now the president could see how this would change the Human race and the commonwealth, the way they looked at the universe...it could mean a new realm to explore, but first she wanted to know a few things.

" When you have, what can you do?" The president asked.

Randall and Bjurman looked at each other. They knew the president was asking a trick question. She knew what this new discovery would mean for humanity, she just wanted to know the scientific details.

Bjurman decided to humour her. " We have already laced a subspace field with another subspace field. There were no sideeffects that were harmful, but we need to develop more advanced sensors that can study the effects of time, and temporal energy. The Asgard scanners indicate that the energy mixing with the mineral changes, becomes time energy, but even the Asgard didn't study time travel. They only did a few experiments, and more successful than ours. Like us, the Asgard possessed subspace technology; sensors, propulsion tech and so on. We can send samples of this stuff - look, is there a better name for it?"

The president thought for a moment, " How about...tempusium? Tempus is latin for time."

Both men tested it, and found that the name fit perfectly.

Happy that the tempusium now had a name, Bjurman carried on, " As I was saying, we can send off samples to various institutes researching subspace, and try and make new sensor technology that can detect the presence of chronons for us to study."

The president nodded, " Get on to it."

* * *

**2 years later. 2106.**

* * *

Sandra Pullman, of Starfleet's test pilot division, was heading her warp ship towards Sol Wormhole entrance 2, the closest one to Earth. Pullman checked the new drive. The Time drive. Just the notion of time travel was enough to make her feel giddy. She had attended the briefing, watched the recordings of the various experiments, and now Starfleet had prepped a test ship for testing the time drive. Pullman had been one of a hundred test pilots, all of them of the highest calibre, and she had drawn the shortest straw in the selection.

The test ships resembled futuristic versions of the Phoenix, Starfleet's homage to the first warp flight, long, tubular rocket like craft. Pullman had seen the drive first hand. She wasn't sure if it was something she could believe; it looked partially crystalline, and partly mechanical, held inside a number of subspace generator rings, liked to the warp drive of the test ship.

Pullman stopped the ship before the wormhole entrance grew closer before she turned the test ship around. The orders were not to open a wormhole, not just yet. Starfleet Science wanted to test the drive inside their home system, just outside the predicted planetary shifts. Pullman recalled how nervous she was of passing through solid matter, but she was reassured that the time drive would see to it she was phased outside the normal space / time continuum. The idea was to accelerate the time drive into the future, and collect as much information about the drive in practical demonstration to see if future drive tech needed adjustment. It was a Starfleet policy to have all new drive technology tested to the highest levels before they were put to proper use.

Pullman activated the time drive, channeling energy into the subspace field. She saw the present date. It was actually kind of fitting the first temporal displacement in space would take place so close to the anniversary of the first warp flight. She set the controls to take the ship into the future by a factor of ten, and the scanners would record as much as possible. It was hoped this system of temporal scanning, at the moment probably crude, would be used to survey the rise of races like the Minbari, the Vorlons, and the Centauri, and the Asgard, but this was the first test.

Pullman checked the medical scanner to her right, checking that the scanners were properly attuned to the wrist straps on her wrists. Since time travels affects were presently unknown on human tissue, the precaution was perfectly logical and reasonable. The final checks carried out, Pullman opened a comm channel to Starfleet.

" This is Sandra Pullman, I'm ready to commense t-flight number 1. Wish me luck."

" Good luck." The collective chorus came over the comm, and Pullman smiled. She activated the time drive.

Pullman felt she was about to be sick. It was like her head had been shoved into a cement mixer and turned on whilst her body was being spun around and round on a merry go round. After a moment, her head cleared, and her dizziness and nausea cleared, and she was able to concentrate on the controls and the medical scanner. The yearometer was speeding along, and the temporal scanning system was picking up information, comm traffic. Sandra looked out of the window, watching as the Earth and the rest of the solar system moved on their orbit around the sun, watched as the moon circled the Earth clouding one half of her home in darkness whilst the other side was bright before the cycle was reversed and the roles were switched.

She checked the yearometer, and saw that the ship had passed through most of the 22nd century, and was now in the 23rd. She looked out, and saw starships of immense size and power, though of different design, move through the system swiftly, though as the time drive was speeding up the flow of time outside the test ship, it was more than likely the journeys they were undergoing were much longer than Pullman, in her temporally displaced environment, could believe. They were moving as if they were being fast forwarded.

Pullman looked at the metre that showed the amount of temporal activity going on outside the ship. It showed there were temporal shields covering Earth, the moon, and the solar colonies. The configuration was incredibly advanced, and it was having an affect of blinding the scanners. Pullman knew that time travel was going to become the new it, just like the underspace network was in her time, but she had never seen it to this extent.

The scanner indicating mass suddenly blarred into life, and Pullman shrieked in surprise when she saw a massive starship appear in front of her, and suddenly pass through her as if she were thin air.

The sensation of passing through the ship made Pullman's head spin. She passed through the hull, seeing the hull thickness, but she was head high in what appeared to be liquid metal. Just as quickly the ship passed through her, but she heard the throb of powerful engines, but she couldn't see them.

Pullman felt disorientated again, and decided she would return to her own time. She moved quickly at the controls, and reversed the polarity of the time drive, and programmed the ship for the return journey.


	6. Chapter 6

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**2112: Quantum Foam.**

* * *

Commander Erin Porter felt both sick and terrified, but also excited. She was inside a part of the wormhole, outside the protective environment of the starship Malinche. Clad inside a space suit protected by a subspace thruster frame, Porter felt protected. She looked to her left and to her right, and felt pleased she wasn't alone. There were two other Starfleet scientists with her. Juliana Walker, one of the new breed of wormhole physicsts, a study in wormhole physics that made the network possible, was with her, and from what Erin could see, the younger woman was as excited and terrified as Porter herself was.

On her right was another scientist, a quantum physicist, Andrew Parker, who was scanning one of the puddles in the wormhole with a quantum laser scanner. He was a quiet man, but Porter could see he was as excited as they were. It was, afterall, not everyday that people got to explore a wormhole. The puddles, which is what they appeared to be, were throughout the network, appearing and disappearing at will. Porter knew that scientists had believed that the puddles were just a sideeffect of the wormholes, but quantum scans didn't pick that up. That was why the Malinche was here, in this closed off part of the network. Starfleet regularly diverted traffic along the charted regions of the network for scientific research. The research was usually carried out near developing colonies, as they had the lowest amount of traffic through the underspace. Porter twisted tightly in her seat. It was hard since her space suit was bolted into the subspace frame giving her protection. Subspace tech worked well in the wormholes, and warp fields had been tested and proven that too high levels of speed could mean the damage to the network, and to the ship as well. Subspace fields allowed for maneuverability, and Porter for one was delighted she wasn't in a quantum slipstream conduit, if she were she would've been torn to pieces, field or no field.

Porter had built much of her career on the surveying of the easy to study network, and it brought her a lot of prestige, but if she was honest with herself, the wormhole network had been too easy to chart, almost as if it wanted to, like the charting was part of a bigger scheme...

" I don't believe it." Parker said over the comm.

Porter shook herself out of her reverie, and turned her attention back to the present. " What is it?"

Parker turned his head to face her and Juliana, his eyes wide with astonishment. " Since subspace was discovered there have been quantum fluctuations, picked up by incredibly sensitive scanners, but until now they haven't been confirmed. I've been subjecting this puddle section-' he jabbed a finger at a point where there was a boulder sized puddle forming and fading before another formed a bit to the left above before fading as well. " To quantum and subatomic scans. I'm transferring them to you two." He said, tapping into the control key on the frame.

Porter looked down at the sensor data. It looked more like a photograph picked up by a laser, but Porter saw something that she couldn't believe - and if Juliana's what the hell? was any indication she saw it too - then Porter would swear she was not alone.

The photograph, being this close to a wormhole, was something subspace physicists had been clamouring to prove, and even the advanced knowledge of the Asgard had picked up on it as well. The Asgard, being scientifically inclined, had dedicated centuries of their time to understanding the universe and how it was structured. The computer core had been combed, and only an echo had raised the alarm that the Asgard knew something their human contempories didn't. That was why they were here, to find out if they were right.

About the existence of quantum foam. Quantum foam was said to be the foamy substrate of space/time, and the substance that subspace was made from, subatomic wormholes joining distant points of the universe together. It had been hypothesised by John Wheeler in the 20th century, but since subspace couldn't be observed at the time the existence of this domain was hard to pinpoint.

Juliana had long suspected quantum foam may be responsible for much of the network, and this was the first confirmation. " Are the walls made from it, not just the puddles?"

Parker nodded, " I've scanned both already, confirmed the readings. The walls of the wormhole we're inside, and indeed in all the other conduits are made from it."

Porter looked at the puddles, " Andrew, what do you think the puddles are for? They seem to form all over the place. Why would a wormhole network with entrance ways have wormholes that are subatomic open and close all the time when there are dozens of entrance and exit points?"

Parker had grown up in a city where there was an underground railway. He knew that stations covered the entire network where entrance ways did not always connect to them, and it wasn't just underground, surface railways always had stations between the departure and terminating stations. Was this true here?

" Erin, what if the makers of the network decided that to make better use of the network, they created a way for entrance and exit without relying solely on the entrace and exit points, like an underground railway with multiple stations that lead to the surface?" Parker asked. He knew he was merely hypothesising, but it was a good theory.

Walker nodded, or as much as she could within the frame support. " It's a good idea, but how could they do that?"

Erin agreed, " And why would they even need the entrance ways if that was the case? Each solar system has them at distant points with Earth being the hub."

" I dunno, maybe the entrance ways are for surface ships, starships," He hypothesised. " The subatomic wormholes could be used in the same way the intergalactic Asgard transporter beams are used to join one colony to another, saving the time and resources on ships and fuel."

The recent studies into Asgard technology had shown that the Asgard, with their advanced technology, had devised a means of teleporting matter through space, travelling lightyears without needing space ships. R&D were planning on studying the technology and integrating it into Earth technology, taking the strain off the merchant and exploration fleets, but the technology was so much more complicated than the regular teleport system due to the scale of the teleportation that it would be years before a prototype could be invented.

" It's a good theory," Walker said slowly, thinking about it. " And it would make sense that it would also be used as a support for the network as well as a means of teleportation."

It was another day of discovery.


	7. Chapter 7

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**Strange Dimension in Underspace.**

* * *

Erin Porter ground her teeth together, and she wished the captain of the Malinche wasn't a pompous fame seeking moron. Captain Leonard Janowski reminded her of a fellow cadet who boasted everyday about his abilities, his prowess, but under pressure he was as weak as mouse against a cat. Porter hadn't known much of the captain of the Malinche prior to her boarding of the ship, except that he was already disliked in the same scale as Captain Styles, another pompous Starfleet officer, who had fouled up a transwarp experiment only a year ago, and resulted in the drive burning in an unknown galaxy, even the regular warp drive was burnt out solid, and the ship was virtually stranded. If it wasn't for the closeness of a solar system, only a couple of weeks sublight travel away, then they would never have reached a wormhole and journeyed as far away as they could, sending out subspace pulses to find a wormhole beacon to aid in their return.

Styles had been court martialled for his mistake, but Janowski took arrogance to new limits. He even looked the part, with his rattish face, slicked dark hair, and grey eyes. " Captain, the readings are conclusive, if there's an instability in the wormhole, then we should slow down the ship," Juliana snarled, her impatience growing with the idiots refusal. Porter and Andrew Parker looked at one another, both keeping their tempers under control.

" According to our charts," Janowski sneered, " the wormhole's in this region are safe."

Porter folded her arms. Technically she knew that Janowski was right. Wormhole exploration missions thoroughly searched for energy instabilities inside the wormholes, and that the reason Earth found them safe and free of said instabilities was why the Starfleet allowed extragalactic travel. She also knew that Juliana was right too, and that the idiot was wrong, and possibly endangering the lives of his ship and his crew. Porter had spent enough time on the Malinche to know that this was the one ship with the most transfer orders since no one could stand Janowski; he was patronising, rude, arrogant, and he was a chauvinist, though he hid it with Porter and Walker, they were scientists, and their influence in Starfleet could have repercussions for his ambitions. If he did achieve any of his ambitions, Janowski would be a really influential captain. That was how exploration worked, you discovered something, and you found glory in it. Unfortunately he had drawn the short straws of tedious duty, and he took most of his frustration out on his crew. Porter had heard that as well. Janowski was a glory seeker, who wanted to discover something no other Starfleet officer had. That was why he had applied for a 4 year mission of exploration in another galaxy. There were dozens of Starfleet officers who would prefer to do something more practical and far more rewarding than simply travel between starbases and colonies, but that work had to be done. Until she had met the man, Porter had expected a captain who was a professional, but what she found instead was a disappointment. When the science team had picked the Malinche because it was the only ship to spare, Janowski must've jumped for joy.

Porter stepped forward, she was a Starfleet commander, and whether he liked it or not, Janowski had to listen. " Captain, maybe we should slow down and investigate, we could encounter something...unusual inside the wormhole." Erin's voice became goading, but she kept her tone cordial and professional. Like a true Starfleet officer.

" Something unexpected." She practically purred the final word.

Juliana and Andrew eyed their colleague, and smirked when they realised what effect her words were having on the arrogant officer.

Janowski had been on the bridge when the scanners picked up an energy distortion, and he had been here long before the scientists had found out about it, but they knew more about it than he did, he was always on the bridge during scientific missions and only took rest when his body needed it, but he was never too far away from a comm unit to notify him of anything unknown for discovery, and his personal study for his own greed. Janowski knew that people were becoming more and more enlightened about the universe, that meetings with new races were opening peoples eyes to the wonders that surrounded them, but Janowski was of the old school where people should dig in for themselves for their own gain, but he wasn't very good at it deep down.

For 5 agonising years, Janowski had been subjected to one evaluation after another where he was constantly pushed aside for more ' worthy' or so they said, captains who were far more honest than he was. The committee for evaluating captains and commanders for exploration assignments was one of the most rigorous processes in the commonwealth, where captains would be placed in a holographic environment, and tricked into thinking they were on missions. What better way was there than to trick people into thinking they were actually in space meeting new lifeforms without them knowing it was a trick? It was the results that were the worst thing.

For some reason Janowski was unable to comprehend, he was never selected for scientific or exploration missions. The committee kept saying ' unsuitable.' When Command informed him that he would be commanding a science mission into the wormhole network, he had jumped for joy, thinking at last he was going to get the fame he thought he would, and when he heard the famous Erin Porter, one of the earliest underspace pioneers, was coming with two of the commonwealths other wormhole specialists, he couldn't have thought his luck was that good. Resolving himself to be on his best behaviour, he had tried to flirt with the two women, but they hadn't thought much of him, and as the details of the mission became clearer, his hospitality flew out the window.

He had thought they would be exploring a region away from the Milky way and charted galaxies, instead they had gone out in space suits and studied a section of the wormhole walls. Janowski had by that time, grown bored, and then he was angry to learn about the existence of quantum foam, and he hadn't been there to take credit for it.

Angry, frustrated, and controlling the urge to shout, Janowski had ordered his ship to leave the area, and return home.

Now this.

On route, the Malinche's sensors had detected something troubling in the wormhole, or so the officer said. Janowski wasn't blind or stupid, he knew he wasn't well liked by any of the crew, but it wasn't his fault that he was passed over for exploration, that they were missing the glory the rest of the fleet were receiving in barrels. The energy distortion in the wormhole was both ignored and worried about by the captain, ignored because it meant he could deny it, and piss off the scientists in front of him, moaning about something trivial in his eyes, and worried because the wormholes were not supposed to leak energy, and the one ahead of them was.

When Porter spoke up, Janowski had listened to her, forgetting his earlier failures to metaphorically jump into bed with her, and seeing instead of a scientist a Starfleet officer. When she had talked about ' something unexpected' Janowski had almost jumped for joy at the prospect of something new.

He would teach the sceptics back home about his mettle as a Starfleet officer.

Turning to the helm station, he barked an order. " Slow us down, but continue on course." To the science station, " Scanners on maximum." To the tactical station, " power up shields."

* * *

Unheard by Janowski, Porter, Andrew Parker and Juliana Walker moved away from the captain who was still barking orders. " How did you know he would do that?" Parker asked.

Not taking her eyes off the captain, Porter whispered back in response, " Janowski's hungry for fame. From what I've heard from some of the crew, off the record, he's been passed over many times over the course of his career for exploration. In a ship's record, that's not good. It means their relegated to the mundane tasks, checking up on mining colonies, fetch and carry. Unless Janowski transfers, then there will be no other decent assignments for the Malinche, and you can bet many of the crew want to be out there in the universe, exploring."

Walker had never imagined that starship and Starfleet life was bound by such politics. She'd always seen Starfleet as an organisation that sent ships out into space, doing their job of exploration and defence of Earth and the rest of the commonwealth. She could understand the crews wanting to do something worthwhile, but to find there were captains and commanders who were willing to stake their careers on doing something they weren't cut out to do was an eye opener. " Is that why the man-" she didn't need to say who the man was - " is so insufferable?"

" Fate doesn't obey people's orders," Porter replied. " There is a committee, a board of Admirals who select captains and commanders for different exploration missions. If we were to send out all our ships to other galaxies, we wouldn't have any to protect homeworld or our colony worlds, and Janowski was one of a hundred captains to be turned over."

Parker gestured towards the screen showing the wormhole tunnel, " What does this do for him?"

" How do you mean?" Porter replied, not understanding until she turned her cerelean gaze towards the screen. " Oh, you mean the disturbance? Starfleet has been sending ships - colonising ships, merchant liners, battle cruisers, frigates, dreadnoughts, science vessels, starships. In that time no ship has ever detected any indication the wormholes were unstable, nor any energy reading that indicated trouble. If the wormholes in this sector are unstable, Janowski will be the first Starfleet officer, and captain," she stressed the word. " to detect and chart it. If its serious, he'll be recognised by Command for detecting the dangers. Not us, the wormhole specialists who advised him, not the science officer for pointing it out. Him. Some captains love taking credit for things like that."

Before the other two scientists could respond, their contempt for the lack of fairness at that policy, the Malinche slowed down and arrived at the area where the wormhole was said to be unstable.

" My god," Porter whispered. In all the years she'd been studying the woemhole network, she had never seen anything like this before. Juliana eyes almost popped out of her sockets, her mouth opening and closing, trying to find the right words to say. Parker was no better. Everyone on the bridge had turned away from their consoles just to see what was happening. Porter couldn't blame them.

The wormhole tunnels were a sooting mix of green, purple, blue, red, yellow hues, and whilst the wormhole was still in those colours, they had become darkened around the...Porter fought to find the right word. Wound, yeah that was it, wound in the wormhole. The tunnel looked normal along one of the walls, but then it started to look...decayed, like a piece of fruit left to rot, or even a gangrenous foot. Indeed, the wound looked normal on the outside rim of the...wound, but the closer it got into the centre, the more damaged it looked. The wormhole looked like it had been torn to pieces by something, and the deeper the damage, the worse it appeared.

" Son of a -" Janowski started, then got a hold of himself. He turned to the science officer. " Report!"

The science officer had to turn his head away from the screen, Porter pitied him, he looked like a kid fresh out of the academy. He fumbled with his instruments for a moment, and Porter decided to go over to help him. He looked up, grateful for the help. His gratitude was pitiful to watch.

" There's incredible subspace damage to the wormhole, captain." Porter replied, running a subspace scan on the wound. " Wait, there's a colossal amount of energy coming from the wound. The graviton and chronon count is off the scale, and the solar matter - what, how the hell did that get in there? - all the energy in there is temporal!"

The science officer looked up from his controls, " How can that be?"

Porter didn't answer, she was running through her mind a list of possible ideas. Juliana came over to her, and leant close to the ear of the science officer. " Can we scan beyond the tear?" She asked, using her own word to describe the wound. It wasn't as descriptive.

The science officer didn't jump, instead he worked on his controls. He shook his head. " There's just too much energy, not all of it subspace."

" Scan the temporal energy," Porter snapped out of her funk.

The science officer ran a scan on the energy, and the console brought up the match. " There's a match. It's...tempuseum."

" The mineral we use for time travel?" Parker asked. Janowski came over to the science station, listening in.

The officer nodded, " Yes, there's a positive match. Most of the temporal energy is based on it, but much of the energy had been transferred through time, but the basic signature's based on tempuseum radiation."

Porter turned to face Janowski, " I say we send a probe inside." It was not a suggestion.

More than willing to become part of the exploration community, Janowski ordered a probe to be sent inside the wound. The tiny probe shot away from the mothership, and the science officer confirmed the contact. " The probe's sending information, and the graviton count's increasing as it got closer. It's like the probes close to a black hole."

Then the probe entered the wound, but the contact wasn't lost. " We're getting pictures," the science officer said.

" Transfer them to the viewscreen," Porter ordered unconcerned that Janowski was in command and she was only an observer. The science officer obeyed the order.

The trip through the wound showed a dark mass of glowing energy, and the probes sensor display showed the graviton count shoot through the roof, off the scale. The subspace energy meter also went off the scale, and the temporal reading did likewise. Whatever this wound represented, it represented a power house. What appeared to be a lightning storm in the mass appeared not far away, and the probe approached it. It was like the probe was a fly going through a hole in a heavy curtain, and when it came out the bridge lighting seemed to go dimmer as the light was replaced by a turquoise light, but it was mixed with green light and energy.

Janowski gaped when he saw where the probe had ended up. The probe had come out into what looked likethe interior of a vast sphere made from polished obsidian. All around the walls were what looked like molded diamonds that were arranged in rows that went up and down and all around the chamber, but there were so many of them that reached upwards that Janowski couldn't count them properly, and he doubted that the probe or the computers of his ship could make a count with the chamber awash with gravimetric and temporal energies, he could see the counts now appear to be insurmountable on the viewer.

In the centre of the chamber was what looked a massive diamond that hovered above inside a framwork with a stream of green-blue energy entering it from below. The diamond, at least that was what it looked like was the source of the gravity in the chamber, and glowing beams of energy were being sent up from a smaller diamond from above the main diamond into the diamond like things on the sphere walls.

The probe flew around the chamber, getting closer to the diamond, and as it grew closer all of the bridge crew could see that inside, as if in another reality, was a black hole. Around it was what looked like the remnant of a starl, the source of the solar matter.

" Can you scan it?" Porter asked the science officer, who was gazing at the screen with wide eyes and a mouth that was opening and closing of its own accord. At her question, the science officer blushed and did as he was told, ashamed one of the most decorated scientists in the Commonwealth would ask that, and he wasn't concentrating on his work.

Porter said nothing, she knew how he felt. I would be the same if faced with something like this, she thought to herself. The boy finished his scans. " The chamber is infact what appears to be a warped subspace pocket that's permanent, and the diamond is a smaller pocket universe to keep it safe, and the beam of energy that was entering it from the bottom appears to be a stream of subspace energy that's being beamed through time, and the diamond ontop of the black hole dimension's made completely from tempuseum, and its a very high grade."

" What about the diamonds on the walls?" Parker asked his arms folded, frowning as he tried to imagine a number of pocket universes built on such a scale as what they were seeing.

" The beams of energy entering them is being beamed somewhere else, or somewheres, there are simply too many of them to count properly." The officer replied. Juliana caught Porter's eye, " Could this be the work of the people who created the wormhole network?"

" It must be, it would explain a great deal about the amount of energy that must support the wormholes," Porter replied, but she had to make a hypothesis. " But why use temuseum, an artifically created substance? Sure it creates radiation that can cause temporal displacement, but would that really work down here, in a wormhole network?"

No one knew.


	8. Chapter 8

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The Transmat Capsule.**

* * *

The room was wide and walled with blue metal reaching high with ceiling recesses with built in lighting panels and luminescent panelling providing light in case of power failure, lined with consoles and panels. A holographic table stood to one side, giving Erin Porter an idea of the scope of the project, and the number of scientists who had pitched in to help her with the work though the basic aspects of the project had not changed, nor had its direction shifted in the decade it had taken to work on it. The room throbbed with power.

In the centre of the room was a massive dias, on it stood a metal egg of gleaming metal with what looking like an iris hatch built into the wall, and it was hard for Porter to believe that this egg was the latest but one of the most important advances in transport technology, and the next step in human travel science. Transporters and the wormhole network had granted humanity time to learn more, but they needed to adapt to the changes and look to the future, something everyone did.

Porter found the environment soothing and peaceful with the soft lighting and hum of power, there was a minimal amount of bustle in the room, but since advances in human technology there had been no need for so much complicated clutter when a small station would suffice.

Erin pulled her scarf closer to her chin as she watched as the scientists and technicians entered the sphere or stand beside it, tapping new data into data padds they were carrying, trying to ignore how her heart was beating inside her chest. She'd been planning this for sometime, ever since she had witnessed that pocket universe onboard the Malinche with those strange mirrorlike devices along the sides of the walls with beams of pure energy shooting into them.

Quantum foam held the answer to pocket universes; simply take a small pocket of the foam, and then use gravimetric energies to expand on it with a n - space casing to take it. The theory had been made on board the Malinche, and stimulated by subspace and gravimetric technologies, the theory had left paper and then the drawing boards and then, finally, the simulations.

For the last 3 years, the pocket universe project had been one of the most fascinating projects Porter had ever invested her time in, and she wasn't the only one to be interested in the project. The project had been to create a pocket universe and install it inside a spherical casing to act as the hull of the craft as it travelled through the wormhole network, with an organic brain made from bacteria with synapses similar to that of a human's own brain with normal AI technologies built around it. Unlike other starships, this capsule would be at home inside the wormhole network, and use artificially induced quantum foam corridors to enter the corridors, like entrances to Underground stations opened up to the tube stations below the streets.

There were 4 other scientists, among them her old friends and colleagues Juliana Walker and Andrew Parker, and 4 soldiers to act as security onboard the capsule, and the President himself presided over the launch ceremony, but Porter paid them no mind, she just wanted to get started.

The interior of the expanded room was simple and functional; it was a simple rectangular room, with a number of consoles with leather seats with bolts drilled into the floors to support them. A wall to the side had three scanner screens built into it for surveying astronomical events, planetary surveys, or general information gathering. All of the others watched Porter as she stood beside the master lever to send the capsule off into the wormhole network. " Ready?" She asked, gazing at their anticipatory faces.

Juliana looked around the room, catching the eyes of everyone before she turned back to rest her eyes on her friend. " Do it, Erin. Lets make history."

Erin pushed the lever...

Outside the transmat capsule, the onlookers watched in awe as the capsule glowed blue, then disappeared as it opened a wormhole the led them into the wormhole network, it was like a child sliding down a water slide into a pool below, only this pool was a wormhole, and powered by a revolution induced gravity warp field, the capsule went on its way through the network.

Erin smiled as she watched in satisfaction as the specialised warp field accelerate the capsule past the critical limits of the structural integrity of the wormhole channel. The capsule's propulsion field was especially designed to interact with the wormhole's subspace currents to induce more rapid acceleration, but Erin was a little surprised by how easily the capsule took to the rapids.

Erin moved back from the screen, and finally realised she hadn't let go of the lever. Unabashed, she turned to Andrew, who was working on the navigational instrumentation, tapping sequences into the navigational computer. " Where are we going?" She asked.

Andrew looked up, and grinned. " I thought we could go to the outer limits of our maps of the wormhole limit, and judging from the acceleration we're making good time. The last survey picked up a planet which has a breathable atmosphere, good sun, and decent gravity, quiet neighborhood. Good place to start work."

Erin nodded approvingly. " Okay. How long before we get there?"

Parker checked, and clicked his tongue in surprise. " We're almost there, just a few minutes to go."

One of the security men whistled. " Damn, that's fast."

" It's because the size of the warp field isn't touching the walls of the wormhole," Walker explained, folding her arms and staring at the scanner screen as the wormhole nodes flashed past, disappearing faster than their eyes could see. " Normal size starships are too big, and their warp fields interact too much with the walls of the wormholes in the Underspace network. With a transmat capsule, the fields are smaller, and the shape of the capsule helps too since its all around."

Parker's console beeped, prompting the attention of the scientist. " We've reached the end, the exit wormhole's opening."

As the wormhole led them out, Walker couldn't help but comment. " You know, if I didn't know any better, I would say that whoever designed the wormhole network knew exactly how to design it for our use, and more specifically, the transmat capsule."

Porter nodded, the same thought had occurred to her too, but she didn't say anything about it.

* * *

For the next three months, the transmat capsule continued to travel the universe, its ability to move rapidly from galaxy to galaxy inside the wormhole network became a matter of routine. For those who had traversed the network long before the capsule project was even thought of, the journey times was quick, but travelling between galaxies inside normal sized starships took a lot longer.

In the capsule the journey time was sliced in half.

Porter and Parker and Walker were in the meeting lounge, a holographic ' window ' showing space outside the network, showing stars, moons, nebula as the womhole moved through them.

" I've been thinking a lot about what you said on our first day, Julie," Erin said, changing the subject. " That the wormhole network was designed exclusively for the transmat capsule."

" Or anything smaller than a starship," Parker said, resting his arms on the table. " But you're right Erin, it does seem too convenient, and how those puddles are in fact quantum foam wormholes themselves leading into the network so then the capsule doesn't need to enter space to find the nearest entrance."

Juliance shook her head, " It does seem too perfect. A starship discovering the network, just when the propulsion specialists were find the slipstream project a bit too much, a wormhole suddenly opens up and the Excelsior, the same ship you were on Erin, just happens to traverse into a galaxy in our local group, but much further out into space."

Erin wrinkled her nose, " You make it sound like the Excelsior was targeted for the discovery of the network."

" Juliana's right," Parker interrupted, leaning towards Erin. " You yourself have pioneered the exploration and exploitation of various galaxies. Without you, nine tenths of what we know about the rest of the universe would've taken centuries to even work out. You pioneered the exploration of the wormhole network, and you did create the transmat capsule."

Erin looked away, her habitual modesty kicking in. She hadn't been the only scientist to learn about the wormhole network, there were others, and two of them were seated around the table with her on the very craft she had helped build.

" I didn't do all those things," she said meekly.

" Maybe not, but your theories have helped us learn more about the nature of the universe, and you did pioneer the transmat capsule project. How long did it take for you to lobby in for it? A month? Two months?"

" Seven months." Erin answered.

Parker waved a hand in a whatever sign. " Okay, seven. And what have we learnt in the transmat capsule? We've learnt how the capsule seems suited for exploration of the network, far more than other starships, and we've compiled over 123 new charts on sectors other starships haven't even touched upon. We've discovered 123,000 new civilisations, made contact with them and discovered new technologies. We would've been able to do that eventually with our conventional starships, but the transmat capsule is the future."

* * *

For the next seven months, the transmat capsule journeyed beyond the compiled charts of the exploration starships, and journeyed further and further. The design of the capsule had been specially designed to create an all round warp field to push the capsule through the network, and rotate it to grant further acceleration, with a liquid metal to absorb the shocks inside the shells.

Erin sat next to the astrometric scanners, trying valiantly hard not to smile. Some people back home believed they were moving too quickly into the universe, but Erin disagreed. Knowledge was perpetual, there was no stopping it, and where was the harm of charting the universe with a wormhole network in your backyard? But still... a feeling kept nagging her.

The wormhole network had appeared out of nowhere, and had appeared when Starfleet had been busy exploring the Milky Way, and the next generation propulsion technologies are just appearing. Juliana had a point, the wormholes had appeared when Quantum slipstream drives failed. It did seem a bit too convenient, but transwarp had become more and more ideal for deep space exploration.

The fact the wormholes themselves were artificial conduits was another puzzle. Who had made them? Why didn't other races seem to know about them and how to open them? Why were humans the only ones to know about them?

Did the makers of the wormholes build transports similar to the transmat capsule the humans were presently using to explore the network, was that why the wormholes seemed to move them faster through space? Was the size the exact reason why normal starships seemed to need more time with less power entering their warp fields to even attempt to make it this far out?

And then there was that strange pocket universe. Porter frowned as she remembered it, the power levels the Malinche detected...there was enough energy in that place to power a civilisation, a space fleet...and a wormhole network all at once, but the presence of tempuseum, the artificial mineral needed for time travelling was another mystery. Had the builders of the wormhole network designed the tempuseum for extra energy, or was it something more?

* * *

For 3 years, the transmat capsule set out deeper and deeper into the cosmos, charting over 100 galaxies outside the ones the humans had already charted and colonised, encountered new aliens, and catalogued new worlds and new phenomenon in the three years. A virus that could make a person split into two people, the good and the evil side, and a silicon based lifeform which was at home underground, consuming rocks and burrowing tunnels with acid. An intelligent creature, a telepathic scan had shown, and a friendly and inoffensive.

As the capsule returned after its 3 year shakedown expedition to Earth, Porter and the others were compiling reports about the things they had seen, and their recommendations. Porter personally didn't see why they couldn't build new capsules, and send them out on long term exploration assignments. They had already telegraphed their new discoveries over the last 3 years, and there were reports that Earth were planning on building an entire fleet of transmat capsules.

Parker stood by the 'helm' of the capsule. " We're there...now." He pulled the lever, and the capsule shuddered as it materialised inside the HQ where it had been launched 3 years before.

None of the crew bothered with operating the scanner screen. What was the point? They were on Earth, their home. There was no need. But it was an action they would regret.

As they left the capsule, they found themselves in the same room, but it was different.

" Where are we?" Porter asked, looking around the room, shaken by the changes she was facing. It looked more or less the same, but the layout of the controls were different, and there were three levels with two circular upper levels clustered around a sphere in the middle of the it all with the bottom one being where the transmat capsule had landed.

The security men pulled out their blasters as a precaution, and Erin couldn't fault their vigiliance, but they were armed and the capsule crew weren't, and took a step forwards, but there was a hum of energy as a forcefield stopped them from moving any further, and they couldn't move back either. They were trapped, and there was nothing they could do to let them out. Before any of the scientists could even make a move to help the security men, they were stopped in their tracks by a voice.

" Don't worry, you're safe here." The voice spoke from behind the capsule.

The capsule crew swung around, and they saw a man step from behind the capsule. Erin took him in. He was fairly tall, with longish brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, with blue eyes on a spheroidical head. The man was wearing a tunic similar to what the capsule crew were wearing. His eyes were fixed firmly on the capsule crew, and he didn't even lift a finger to help the security men.

" Are you human?" Erin asked.

The man nodded, " Yes. You are on Earth, but not your Earth. You see, you have travelled in time thanks to us."

Parker frowned, not liking where this was going. " What do you mean, how did you bring us through time?"

The man bowed his head, and they could all see he was assembling his thoughts. " You have travelled over 400 years into your future, but I can't explain it all to you, someone else will do that for me. Please come with me."

They followed the man along the corridors of the complex. Erin looked around. Aside from the transmat room, the corridors and the complex had not changed the most aside from a different and lighter colour scheme, and pictures along the walls dotted here and there, and exotic plants in vases and pots lined the corridors, but none of the party stopped regardless of how tempted they were. They simply didn't want to lose the rest of the group as they followed the mysterious human being.

The man led them into an antechamber and he took them into the centre of the room, and he turned around and said, " Stay in the exact place you are."

They found they didn't have much choice in the matter, a field of energy dropped down. Erin touched it. " What is it?" She asked.

A familiar voice answered her, but it wasn't the man's voice.

It was Erin's.

Erin Porter strode towards them, smiling at them. Her eyes lit up when they met the stunned eyes of her younger self and her friends, the people she had spent three long and wonderful years onboard the transmat capsule. When her eyes met the stunned eyes of her younger self, she grinned. " Surprised to see me?" She asked.

Younger Erin frowned, " A little. I'm more surprised I live so long."

Older Erin nodded, the grin not fading. " You get used to it."

Younger Erin changed the subject. " How can we be talking? If I'm you and you're me, then shouldn't we cancel each other out or something?"

Older Erin gestured to the still glowing energy field surrounding them, explaining as she walked around in a circle on the edge of the field. " The field is a paradox field, a temporal field of low power that's compensating for the paradox. Paradox shielding, as you know it, is hypothetical, but in time you'll be able to protect yourselves from changes in the timeline.

" The paradox field protecting me from you, and vice versa is designed for this occasion alone. When you leave, it will be dismantled."

Erin and the others wondered how much energy was needed for such a field, and they quickly realised the humans of the future would not have built it without a good reason. Why else would they have drawn the transmat capsule through time? Parker grunted, giving rise to their thoughts. " Why are we here though? Surely you wouldn't go to all this trouble to build a high powered temoral field just to have a meaningless chat with us."

Older Erin smirked. " You're right, Andy. You aren't here for a meaningless chat, you're actually here to build the future. I remember standing here when I was her," Older Erin pointed at Younger Erin. " And listened to the exact thing I'm going to tell you. You'll carry it through."

" A paradox." One of the scientists said, and Older Erin's face lit up when she caught sight of the speaker. " Victor. How are you?"

Surprised, the scientist, an older man in his late 50s, nodded back with a smile. " I'm okay."

" How's the prosthetic heart?" Older Erin asked, indifferent to the amount of time being wasted on this. From her perspective, prosthetic hearts went out when genetic engineering discovering new ways of regrowing new organs for donors took over, but Victor wasn't to know that. Not for another 4 years, but then it would be too late. Victor Bergman was destined to die in the next 3, from her younger self's perspective, but his death wouldn't count for anything.

Surprised at the attention being made to his artificial heart, Victor nodded back awkwardly, surprised it was a part of the conversation. " It's fine, thank you."

Turning back to her younger self, Older Erin went on with her monologue. " We've brought you forward 400 years, to prepare you for the future, a journey that began when the Phoenix broke the warp barrier. You see, we know who built the wormhole network in this time."

Younger Erin moved forwards. " Who built it?"

Older Erin grinned, " Us. Humans. We built it, we sent a device to create the wormholes, tunneling out, using the gravitational forces of suns and planets to attract them with smaller quantum foam wormholes, powered by that pocket universe with the black hole inside."

Victor shook his head, his grey hair swaying. " How could we have built it and harnessed a black hole of that magnitude?"

" The black hole is, well was, from my perspective when the energies of Sol were stabilised. Sol, our sun, will go nova in billions of years time after expanding into a red giant and roasting our level of the solar system, then in time it will become a black hole. We used our techniques to stabilise the black hole, and set it inside a pocket universe to exist in all times and places of the universe, providing energy throughout, giving us energy for our time travel capsules and the wormhole network. The time travel capsule, an extension of the transmat capsule prototype, will become the starship of the day with normal starships still being built to undertake simple space exploration.

" The wormhole network, on the other hand, will actually be easier to build than you think. What happens when you plant a seed in soil?" Older Erin asked, folding her arms and waiting for the answer.

Younger Erin replied, her mind coming up with theories on how to actually build the network in the way her future self was proposing. " It grows into a flower."

Older Erin nodded, " Yeah, and it creates roots as well. The roots of the wormhole network prevents anything and anyone from tampering with them. It goes into the structure of the universe."

Victor held up his hand, his head spinning. " Are you saying that as we build the wormhole network, then we'll be able to tap into the structure of the universe."

Older Erin nodded again as she explained. " The wormhole network provided us with both the means for space travel to become more viable, but also to provide us with a means of monitoring the universe as it expands. The wormholes, as you'll find, can do anything for us. Provide us with time travel information, help manipulate the levels of the cosmos you haven't even imagined, and so on."

As she was explaining this, inside another room with a one way mirror looking outwards to observe the scientists, two technicians were using telepathic subliminal technology to lace into their minds the equations and the basic theories of the building of the wormhole network and the black hole reactor which would power their civilisation. it would take 400 years for the scientists that built the wormhole network to work out why they knew everything so perfectly, then they would design the program to ensure the paradox existed.

This way of beaming the knowledge into the minds of the transmat capsule crew, they ensured their mastery of time and space.

Older Erin was winding down her explanation, an explanation for their being there. It took her only an hour, but none of the transmat capsule crew questioned her for that. Their minds were already spinning as the information buried itself on a subliminal level.

Juliana, her mind reeling with the idea, and the as yet unknown equations she believed her mind was guessing to come up with the technology to build the wormhole network, and the black hole tap, asked. " This is all to help yourselves. This is a paradox. Why should we help you?"

Knowing that the question was required to complete the subliminal programming, Older Erin finished. " If you do not, then past, present and future will cease to exist. If you do create the black hole tap, and the wormhole network, then our future will unfold accordingly."

There was a flash of light when she had finished, and they found themselves back on the transmat capsule. Parker blinked. " Did that really happen, or was it all a dream?"

Porter was just beginning to think it was a dream, but then one of the security guards said, " It was no dream, look." He pointed.

The scientists came over to where the guard was pointing. He was pointing at one of the scanners, the scanner that temporally scanned an environment with telepathic and computer scanners. There, on the screen, was Older Erin.

It was no dream.

The transmat capsule materialised, and this time it was their Earth.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**Genetics.**

* * *

Scientists working on ways to improve the human race worked on stem cell and genetic research. Work on gene therapies helped erradicate and conquer the diseases that had long afflicted humanity. Immune systems became stronger, and the probability of illness was less likely, but people still got sick due to the wish that people should experience the feeling of the common cold or the feelings of a sneeze from an allergy.

The body has long since been thought of as a machine, an organic machine, and indeed the complexities of the human body lent credance to the idea of the philosophy, and work on developing it grew. The scientists, with support from the government of Earth, gradually researched the benefits of genetic engineering, but they were held back by constraints.

If a human is born, then that human needs to grow up, and is presented with choices, and these choices shape that human, and mistakes are considered to be the means of learning. There were many who believed over the years that small quanitities of gene therapies can help the human condition, but it was illegal for full body augmentation, and this never changed. The brains were augmented, to a degree in case the humans started to have serious neurological side effects, such as a development of arrogance and complacency in their growing superiority.

The neural modifications enhanced the brain capacity, allowing humans to increase their intellects, and to a degree all humans now underwent the procedure, but only children that had learning difficulties. Children that didn't suffer learning troubles, and were able to leapfrog above their classmates were considered to be weird because of their brains, but children could undergo the enhancements to the brains easily, and their development improved many times over.

Over the generations, it became normal for children and people to become geniuses with intellects of a magnitude greater than they had before, and even older scientists, who saw the benefits of the neural treatment, began to undergo the same procedure, hoping augmented brain power could and would help them with their researches.

They were right. Theories on the wormhole network had been circulating for years, and ideas on space / time travel were becoming more and more common, and even amateur scientists were developing theories on the means of building time travel and space travel devices more advanced than anything they had at that scientists took a more militant view, and they developed powerful weapons capable of shattering planets into atoms, and a planet on the outermost fringes of the galaxy became the platform for the weapon systems capable of levelling even galaxies, and convert suns into supernovas by converting their cores into iron, instigating a nova.

Strength, speed, agility, reflexes - all these abilities became heightened, and the senses became sharper. Sight, taste, smell, hearing, all of them allowed humans to develop 'sixth' senses. Plans were put forward to build a genetically engineered army to protect the human race, but fears grew. What if the army rebelled against their makers? That kind of protest.

Stem cell research slowed down the aging processes, and later research into virtual immortality became increasingly common. Virtual because the idea of dying and living forever scared some people. Where was the fun in life if you didn't die? That question loomed over all the research, until it was decreed that immortality was more of a curse, than a blessing, but a long life was preferable to a shortened life.

Another benefit of stem cell research was the process of rejuventation; a process where the stem cells could be ' rest, ' literally resetting the body to an 'earlier' age. It was like a 70 year old man reverting back to a teenage state, containing all the individuals memories and exprience in a much younger body.

Rejuvenation had many benefits, but also a number of cons. The most important benefit was that it could allow humans to live for centuries in one single body, but the most important con was the scale of the process. It could take months, or merely days, to undergo a proper rejuvenation, and when the person undergoing the process stepped out of the rejuvenation baths became inredibly hormonal.

They needed sex to shake them out of it.

A scientist called Loki, a geneticist, studied the problems of rejuventation thoroughly, and he tried to think of a way to formally address the problem. A more powerful form of rejuventation in a bath wasn't going to help, on the contrary, the baths mad the hormonal issues apparent.

It wasn't until Loki stepped through a transporter beam that he realised a solution. What if he combined the energy-matter tech of a transmat with the gene therapy technology of rejuvenation?

It would be faster and easier to begin the transmat process, and the computer would be able to compensate for the hormonal troubles.

The process worked, and became known as regeneration.

Regeneration was infinitely more superior than rejuvenation; it allowed the process to be instantaneous, and the computer could be programmed more quickly and easily, and the matter-energy conversion system could be radically faster and more intensive than the baths could be, and indeed more thorough than nanites.

The technology spread through the human empire, and there were millions of safeguards built into the technology, to prevent tampering. The process could be undergone many times, until the human yearned for death.

It was only fair.


	10. Chapter 10

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The Building of the Wormhole Network.**

* * *

The image on the monitor showed the image of the nova, but it also showed the nova beginning to collapse in on itself, as a singularity started to form in the nova. Soon a black hole had formed, and they saw planets and bodies rendered lifeless when the heat radiating from the red giant the sun had become incinerated the worlds, but even though those planets had been roasted, they were still largely intact. The supernova explosion took care of that, but there were still some remains left in the solar system, but when the black hole was formed, and the system was truly doomed when the burnt out cinders were drawn into the event horizon of the black hole, and crushed to atoms. The sheer amount of gravimetric energy in the solar system was staggering, and the wall monitor charts indicating the level of gravitons shot through the roof. Erin Porter shut off the monitor, and changed the display. " As you've just seen," Porter announced to the room at large. " The supernova collapsed under the weight of the gravity, becoming a black hole. Stellar physics has recently taken off, due to the translation of Asgard database, and we've used computer modelling to work out ways to enhance both a stars lifespan, and to accelerate it."

One scientist held up a hand, " Dr. Porter, we've all read your work on solar and wormhole physics, your work on the wormhole network and the transmat capsule project is exemplary, and we understand the majority of your work, but what I don't understand is how this helps us."

Erin nodded, " Dr. Hiller, of all scientists you must appreciate fusion technology, we know that we can create an artificial sun and contain it inside a fusion bottle, but we know we can devise a pocket universe to contain a supernova, a natural fusion reaction, and use that to generate colossal quantities of energy, but a black hole is a whole different cookie. The gravitational energies make travelling near it is incredibly difficult, and harnessing the power is dificult as well. One way is to simply travel forwards into time, and place the supernova before it becomes a black hole, inside a pocket universe, and close it off But my plan's more ambitious, I propose we simply transport the hydrogen fuel of the supernova out, ejecting it into space, and create the black hole whilst keeping us safe inside specialised shielding." Tapping the padd in her hand, Porter brought up an image of the pocket universe inside the wormhole universe, the same one as the Malinche found. Only the image on the screen was a hypothetical as well as a scientific overview, but since the pocket universe was well advanced than the current tech, but since pocket technology had been recently pioneered, a great many ideas had formed about the construction of the pocket universe located inside the wormhole network.

Some scientists believed that the pocket universe contained the energies of the black hole nestled deep inside the wormhole network, and simulations proved that they could and did, but since the meeting with the Erin Porter of the future, and the revelation humanity were the builders of the wormhole network, many scientists had excitedly put their work to action, contributing ideas and theories, but Erin of the present believed they would need a tremendous amount of energy to develop the black hole energy plant she had witnessed. The meeting with Older Erin and the possibilities of the future meant that time travel was more widespread, and the humans of the future would soon become a highly advanced civilisation, even more so than they were at the present time.

It was clear that her idea of how to harness the black hole, and the supernova at the same time, and also gather subspace energies to manipulate the wormhole network, was already gaining ground. Dr. Cutter stood up. A woman with shoulder length hair held in a pony tail, she was one of the Empires most influential scientists. Her speciality was in astrophysics. " Dr. Porter, how would you extract the black hole?"

Erin frowned at Cutter, trying to figure out who she was, but when she did, she answered the question. " We can use a gravimetric forcefield generated by the energies of artifical black holes, like a magnet with the same poles repelling each other. As we do that, we can safely place the black hole inside the pocket universe," Porter tapped her padd again, and a diagram appeared on the screen. Pocket universes resembled balloons that inflated the larger they grew, but they usually appeared to have one way inside. This one didn't. This one had one main connection, and what looked like threads leading away from it.

" This connection," Porter pointed at the one main connection point. " Is where the energy derived from subspace goes inside," a diagram appeared on the screen, showing the black-yellow ball symbolising the black hole, with a line of blue leading into it. " And the energy is delivered straight inside the ergosphere of the black hole, spinning round and round, and gathering energy. The black hole with reside inside a mirrored ball containing superspace, which breaks down at a mass energy level, and the energy released is trippled in quantity many times over, and passed through tempuseum by 30 seconds, it becomes temporal energy, which we have managed to harness with previous work and experiments." One scientist frowned, " How do you propose to create the wormhole network?"

All the scientists agreed, that was a good question. Porter tapped her padd again, and this time, what looked like a web appeared. " In the last 17 years, we've been experimenting with metamaterials to produce more advanced metals, and since the discovery of quantum foam, we've looked into an old theory of using metamaterials to manipulate and create artifical quantum foam which we can examine in a laboratory, only now we've got something more versatile. Using Asgard knowledge as well as ours, we can use a web to create a small section of the wormhole network, and we already have, using a more...downgraded version of the device. When I saw downgraded, I mean smaller."

That had the scientists buzzing; how big did this thing have to be? Porter answered that question, " Placed inside a pocket universe, we can in fact grow it in an enviroment that our present universe would not be able to cope with, but they have to be sent back through time to work properly. They have to be big, and they need to be sunk down into the foam, otherwise they won't work. The webs are quantum foam - subspace manipulators. As the universe expands, just after the formation of the universe, the gravity would help when the first suns are born brand new, just beginning to burn, and the webs can do their work, using the energy from the black hole, and the gravimetric energy received from it, to begin the formation of the wormholes, linking and interlinking, lapping and overlapping, a hundred times over, until you get a wormhole network."

" How many do there need to be?"

Porter nodded, she'd expected that question. " Grown from metamaterials inside a pocket universe, and interacting with temporal-gravimetric-subspace energy, the webs can grow in an interal space covering 7 - 9 galaxies, and the exterior space could be small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, and there's no real limit to how many can be created, and their range is already tremendous. Our testing has been on higher level quantum foam, and we've already created a wormhole network between radiating out in a circle, encompassing 90 billion light years, and that was with only one web. The webs will contain gravimetric manipulators, and a specialised fleet of transmat capsules to help mould the gravimetric energy, and the webs would work in conjunction to form veteran nodes inside the wormholes, strengthened by dark matter and tempuseum radiation to stabilise and maintain the wormholes," Porter mimed the moulding and strengthening with her hands to emphasise what she was saying. " For our purposes though, we need many more. We estimate no more than 4,561 should do, with one of them being much larger than the others, and controlling the others, and containing a sort of conduit between the black hole and the other webs in the network. We need that many in order to manipulate the quantum foam more greatly, and since the webs'll be working in a high gravity environment, we should have a more far reaching underspace. The webs will stay inside the quantum foam, and over the years they'll maintain the network, and help us chart the undiscovered areas. As new suns and planets form, the AI of the webs will begin to create new pathways, using the gravitational pull of the new objects in space as a magnet."

" You say it as if the wormhole network's going to be continuously made." One man commented. " The universe is continuosly expanding," Porter explained. " And as a result, the webs need to function in order to generate more wormholes, when a sun is projected with a new solar system of the temporal observatory built into the web, the web then creates a new set of wormholes, and a transmat capsule can survey the new system. The webs have another use, they can also help us map out the universe by sending us astrometric information."

" Stopping our exploration missions in the process," One mumbled. Porter heard that, and thought fast, knowing the future of the project depended on what she said next. " No," she said, and all the scientists stared at her, wondering what she was going to say next. Erin continued, thinking carefully about what to say. " When we first achieved space flight, we started looking into achieving interstellar travel. When we achieved warp flight, we dedicated ourselves to exploring the universe, and expand our knowledge. We've visited countless worlds, and that was before the Excelsior discovered the wormhole network, and found we could move virtually instantaneously through them, mapping them easily and quickly. There were no complaints when Starfleet began the exploratory missions. In fact, there were cries of delight, since the wormholes presence meant there was no need for a radically advanced propulsion system, and again when we discovered time travel, no one complained, and there are even now, expeditions being sent back through time to study ancient cultures, not only on this planet but also on others. Why should building the wormhole network in our favour not help us? There shouldn't be protests with the web design for the Underspace vortex. In fact, the webs should do the opposite. I said the webs can help us map out the universe by sending us astrometric information, yes, but I also said we can send capsules, and ships, in to survey them. There's no danger in that, and since the webs will be under our control, we can learn more about the nature of the universe, some of which is still a mystery to us. It may take centuries, but we may find that there are new mysteries out there, mysteries that may take eons, if not ever, to solve." Erin looked around the room, looking each scientist in the eye for a moment before she moved her attention onwards. " And the webs may even find us these new mysteries. No matter what, our thirst for knowledge will never go. There are areas out there where the laws of physics do not apply, and science vessels have been despatched to understand these regions, and we try to answer the questions that keep cropping up." How is it possible this place exists, and isn't constant throughout the universe? How can these places exist? If faster than light travel is possible here, why isn't it so elsewhere? Those are the sort of questions we ask of such places, and there are others that can be asked by building the webs. Think of it," Erin said imploringly, " we have never attempted a double project of this magnitude before. We have an opportunity to learn more about the universe around the time of the Big Bang, and the early universe. How can you not see that?"

* * *

Erin had shamed them. As soon as she had finished with her presentation, the others had automatically decided to support it, giving Porter and her group the clearance needed to build the black hole reactor, and the wormhole network. It took a few years to prepare everything, and the media would always go off about it for months, talking about follies and marvels and wonders of the age. Porter ignored it, having been used to the media's adulation for a long time, but she didn't like her work being referred to as 'follies', and she had to work hard to stop anyone from finding out too much about the researches they were undertaking.

In the years between the meeting and the launch of both projects, the underspace mapping had unveiled wondrous civilisations and new mysteries for scientists and philosophers to keep busy for centuries. The sun was on the point of exploding, and Porter, safe and sound inside the control room downtime, felt slightly scared and intimidated about what they were witnessing. The soon to be black hole was almost ripe for harvesting, though Porter was worried about unforseen side effects. There was no ship, no pioneer from the past entering the future. Porter wanted this to be a truly easy mission, and they were safe on Earth in the past. Originally the plan was to have a specially protected starship capture the black hole, but the simulations always showed the shields shut down because of the stress. For a long time there was doubt, but eventually the idea of a remote base to conduct the experiment / operation appeared, and simulations allowed a 99% chance of failure, preferable to the 78% chance as before. Porter watched the screen for a long time before she snapped out of it. She was supposed to be capturing the black hole, and use it for the betterment of the human race not gawp at it." Alright," Porter said, trying to sound as if she had been there the whole time and not daydreaming. " Are the webs ready?" She asked Parker.

Parker checked his readings. " Sealed inside the pockets are 4,560 webs, each one tapped into subspace enhanced with the black hole energy system that's due to be made." Porter nodded, " Start the process. Activate the temporal transporter beams, transport the proposed amount of hydrogen fuel from the sun, and transport it into the laboratories." She ordered, not taking her eyes off the screen as the transporter beams sent up from the past did their work. It was strange, going round the sun's back and remove the fuel like this, but Porter couldn't see any other way to cause a black hole. Earth scientists, using solar probes, had learnt much about stars through investigation. Matter transmutation had already allowed for supernovas to be created, and it was possible to use plasma-antimatter byproducts to stop all nuclear fusion in the star. And transporter beams were similar to matter transmutation.

* * *

The star exploded, forcing the onlookers to cover their eyes before the automatic system activated the polarisation field to filter out the brightness orf the nova. Transporter beams modified to beam gravity, tracking matter through space were pushed into the collapsing star, crushing the fuel depleted sun, in and in until there was only a black hole. Porter snapped out, "Now, put it inside the padd."

Space seemed to ripple around the black hole as an almost 3d virtual silver ball appeared in space, the specially prepared black hole pocket universe was manouevered into place as gravity field are placed around the singularity, and subspace rippled around the black hole as the pocket universe was maneouvered into place. Actually the padd was the size of a very small planet, and it would be this small padd that the black hole would be supercompressed, and a beam of subspace energy would be shone into the ergosphere, generating unlimited energy, enough to power the Human civilisation, and power the wormhole network.

The black hole disappeared into the pocket universe, like an egg yoke falling into a bowl, and the trained humans working and monitoring the work quickly sealed the black hole inside the pocket universe. It was still dangerous until it was placed, finally, inside the secondary dimension pocket, where, inside the wormhole network, it would generate greater potential energy.

* * *

The beauty of the webs was that they acted similar to the tunneling shields used by engineers to build underground railways, though they used principles similar to the stations built for the Paris Metro. Instead of mindlessly burrowing through quantum foam, and spending so much time tunneling through the universe, the webs were instead sunk down into quantum foam, and since they were massive 2 - 4 galaxy sized constructs, they had the power to manipulate subspace and quantum foam, and they pumped dark matter to stabilise and control the size, shape, and stability of the wormholes.

As the quantum foam was expanded and power was fed by the black hole captured and beamed through time, the webs started interconnecting with one another. The humans created the Prime Web, a 12 galaxy sized spanning web that controlled the others, and it contained the Black hole, only now its name changed.

It had become Time's Eye. Time's Eye was situated in a dimensional pocket inside the web, and successfully held the wormhole network up by delivering dark matter throughout the network. 4,561 webs, powered by one black hole, some scientists believed the number excessive, but Erin Porter and those pioneers believed it was worth it. Astrometrics would spend decades mapping and collating 10,000,000,000,000,000 Gigabytes of information about space every year, and would send transmat capsules to make sense of it all.

* * *

The web was using gravimetric energy to warp quantum foam using 'tunnelers,' devices similar to transmat capsules, despatched to use the energy to warp the wormholes before siphoning dark matter to hold them open as the energy was pumped through the webs from the black hole. Considering their range of travel, a single transmat capsule could mould and tunnel enough wormholes leading outwards away from the web, and since the web was using gravity taken from suns, planets, and of course, Time's Eye, to make the quantum foam more malleable.

In the early years of the universe, where the early galaxies took time to form timed for the arrival of the webs to allow for the galaxies to form correctly, Porter had arranged for 2 webs to be dropped into qunatum foam to make as much preliminary work possible in the early galaxies, and thanks to the gravitational eddies created by the expanding universe, the webs made significant progress. After the first 12 galaxies were tunneled, tempuseum radiation was mixed with dark matter to really stabilise the wormholes and make them everlasting, and new discoveries in particles allowed for the creation of verteron nodes, artificially created particles, and research into verterons had shown that a verteron node with energy supplied with dark matter, could hold up a wormhole indefinitely, particularly when supplied with radiation rich temporal energy. Linked to the Time's Eye to stabilise the wormholes, these verteron nodes played the same part as steel or concrete in a tunnel made of normal matter on Earth. As more and more webs were dropped in the gravity rich environment of the expansion of the universe in the early years, and the wormholes were generated, and transmat capsules were sent back through time using time drives to explore the early years of the universe. These transmat space capsules, powered by the Time's Eye, would be remembered for two very important things; firstly they would chart the early universe, making monumental discoveries that would shake up the scientific community for decades to come. These capsules would open the doors to new ideas, new philosophies, and new thoughts about the universe before the humans had evolved to the point where they would make the underspace in the first place. Secondly, these transmat capsules would be remembered for being the first rudimentary space/time capsules, and in the future scientists and engineers would come together to develop the technology, until they developed the first true space/time machine.

The TARDIS.

* * *

**Sorry if I've been harping on too much about Underground stations, and the Paris metro, but I watched a documentary about the building of the Underground railways in Paris, London, and New York, and I loved every minute of it, especially the building of the Paris metro, who's engineers had to work with the gloopy muck their city's built on, and I had the idea of using the principle of simply sinking a device into quantum foam to make the wormholes without spending centuries expending time and effort tunneling one wormhole after another, and I've been wrestling with how to actually build the network in this story. I wanted the methods to be worthy of the Doctor Who Time lords, who would've wanted something simple and efficient.**

**Next Chapter - The History of the TARDIS.**


	11. Chapter 11

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The TARDIS project.**

After the successes with the transmat capsules, and with the experiment to add a time drive into the system to open up new doors for exploration and scientific research, Earth focused its attention into developing the technology and adding to it. The development of the black hole power source in the far future was an added bonus, as the black hole's pocket reality was sitting tucked away outside normal space-time, and time and distance meant nothing to the reactor.

With beams of temporal energy spreading throughout the universe, the transmat capsules had an energy supply for their time drives, but the technology wasn't entirely perfect yet. The TARDIS Project was to create test beds for new technologies used in transmat capsule and time drive research.

The Type One TARDIS was simply an updated transmat capsule, with a time drive added on. It functioned perfectly enough, and its connection to the black hole energy source was perfect, but when the time machine tried to travel further back through time, the time drive had problems absorbing the energy flow. Later models showed it was because the time drive was a latter addition.

The Type Two TARDIS was another transmat capsule that had a temporal drive added, and although superior to the early model, it still had energy problems because the drive had to be remodulated every time the ship travelled back past what scientists called the 4 billion years barrier, a barrier that the new space- time machines had trouble passing.

The Type Three to Type five TARDISes were faced with competition with the development of the Time room technology, specialised rooms with time space portals accessing the vortex.

The Type 10 TARDIS saw a development in the form of the realisation that earlier TARDIS capsules were transmat capsules which had an added time drive and temporal instruments. The Type 10 TARDIS was a five year project, with work from all temporal experiments added on with all the latest technologies. Grown using the same transmat capsule technology, the Type 10 had the time drive grown with it, instead of it being added on as with older model time machines, with the AI included with temporal monitoring added.

The Type 10 was crude compared to the latter models, but it was the first truly significant time machien built yet, and its new innovation broke through the barrier since as the time drive was added onto the growing matrices the power flow was constant.

As the Type 10 gave way to later models, the research gleaned from the Type 10 experiments gave way to new theories that would take another 30-40 years to work out by the time Type 30 came out.

The Type 20 TARDIS was, when it came out, the most advanced time ship built by the humans, it had a fully integrated wormhole generation system, temporal drive and scanning facility.

The Type 30 TARDIS was built after 34 years of research and development, and it would prove to be part of the groundwork of later time machines, and unlike other TARDISes the Type 30 the first time machine mass produced with 7 ships. The reason for this was to start using TARDISes the same way the transmat capsule, which had practically superseeded space ships and taken humans to the stars, only with the TARDISes it was to see how well devised the time travel systems worked.

The Type 30 was so successful the humans built another 100 ships and sent them back through time to various worlds to record their historical development in other galaxies, and also to map out the temporal anomalies science vessels had detected over the years.

The Type 40 TARDIS became the First Mark 2 Time and Space machine, as opposed to the Mark 1. The Mark 2 TARDIS was the cumination of nearly 60 years of work to develop, and it was the most advanced ship built by the human race, and the first fully mass produced ship with over 700 vessels built. Included in the ship's design was the inclusion of a shuttlebay with 90 transmat capsules that could leave the pocket universe of the space-time machine in case of severe temporal instability.

Including a superior AI, the Type 40 was a maze of laboratories, holosuites for categorising astronomical events, and was considered a research vessel.

As the TARDISes were being developed, the transmat capsule was also developed to match the race with the TARDIS, only eventually the transmat capsule became more geared for war and battle. Soon it was decided a separate number of TARDISes should be built for warfare. In contrast to the pocket sphere of a TARDIS or regular exploration transmat capsule, the Battle varient was in fact diamond shaped, with smaller pockets added onto the diamond. These were linked to the dimensional bridge linking the ships interior with the real universe. These pockets contained planet or solar system sized warp silos, factories building massive weapons of destruction, like quantum or photon torpedoes, or hyperspace missiles that were launched through a hyperspace fold, and exploded in the centre of a planet, or a sun. Some of these pockets also contained TARDIS fighters, small TARDISlike fighters that carried 3 crew members each, and was connected to the main body. Powered by fusion and neutron bottles, these fighters had a limited range of 12 thousand years, and were armed with antiproton weapons. Other pockets also contained clone or immense android armies controlled by the TARDIS AI. The androids were virtually indestructible, and each carried a small fission and temporal bomb designed to wipe out all life on a planet. The TARDISes had the power to open up numerous wormholes nearby the enemy, and fire torpedoes or other weapons through them, causing untold levels of damage. They named this the Wormhole cluster tactic.

Powered by three dimensional taps into the Time's Eye, the war class of transmat capsule or TARDIS, the primary weapon of a War capsule was the focused energy weapon, which could tear a starship to pieces, but they also possessed psionic and subspace weaponry. The psionic weapons were a military off shoot of the telepathic technology developed for communication. A psionic amplifier could link with another mind, inducing madness and insanity, creating an enemy with the potenital to destroy more of the enemy than the humans. The War TARDISes possessed temporal weapons that could accelerate time inside a small pocket of space, and they had a process that blended cosmology, temporal physics, matter-energy transfer where a device is beamed into the core of a star, and accelerates the time of the star through time, making the sun think its fuel was gone, causing it to collapse and burn planets in the solar system to cinders.

**Next Chapter - The Daleks**


	12. Chapter 12

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The Dalek War. Part One.**

* * *

The first meeting with the Daleks came by accident, and not one humanity had wanted. The Daleks originated on a planet called Skaro, and according to temporal expeditions and observatories it had been the battleground of a war between two races. The Thals and the Kaleds had fought for centuries over a course of 7,000 years where they would enter a cycle of warfare for a few decades before ending up in an uneasy truce that was more like a Cold war period, and then the war and hostilities would begin yet again.

During the time of war, both sides would begin with the best equipment, but then they would stop and make do with the basics. Even their uniforms, with their plastic armour was mixed with ancient helmets, that curiously enough resembled World war 2 helmets, or Conquistador helmets. As the wars passed, the planet became heavily polluted with the fallout, and mutations became common amongst both species, where all those unlucky to be mutates were rejected by the rest of the species, in the name of purity, even children or deformed soldiers, mutated to chemical, radiation, and genetic weapons. The resulting mutations were accelerated by the Kaled scientist, Davros, who believed such mutations to be irreversible, and so experimented on his own people, removing their consciences and rendering them twisted beings with incredible intellectual prowess, but evil minds.

Placed inside a life support battle armour, fully mobile and powered by static electricity, the Dalek battle casing was a marvel of engineering, but the humans didn't appreciate them, only hated them for being so hard to get through to the stunted mutant nesting inside them.

The humans and the Daleks met by chance when the Humans entered a distant galaxy far out into space, millions of light years far out away from Earth, fortunately for the humans. The Daleks, not tolerating the existence of technology far ahead of their own, launched an attack against the humans, who were surprised as they had kept their transmissions secret from the Daleks and the other races in the galaxy. Sending a hasty report through the wormhole network, the humans prepared for the next attack by the Daleks.

By the time the Daleks assaulted the colony, the humans were ready. As was typical, the Daleks sent a full battle group of thirty killcruisers. As soon as they approached the colony, the humans sent a message to them, asking them for peace. The Daleks didn't reply, and the battle commenced, and the Daleks confidently enough approached the planet, and launched their attack. After all, had they not already proven themselves superior in battle?

As the staser beams crashed against their shields, destroying their ships and wiping out their fighter wings in a second, the Daleks realised their battle computer could not lock onto the human ships, or the planet mounted weapons and shields. As the intergalactic starships ripped the Daleks to pieces, the Daleks attempted to ram one of the motherships, but the mothership simply underwent a phase shift, and the killcruiser passed right through it before it was destroyed properly. For 2 minutes, the Daleks and the humans were locked in a battle, and then it was over.

When it was over, the humans gathered as much of the Dalek technology, pieces of the ships, Dalek casings, and weapons, and took them to the colony for analysis. If another race from their galaxy had tried to understand the engineering built into Dalek technology then they would fail. Dalek technology worked on static electricity, something that was considered impossible, but humans superior technological knowledge allowed them to decipher as much as they could, but the technology they had to work with was limited.

Back on Earth, the council decided what to do with the Daleks. They analysed the earlier report sent by the colony, then the attack's statistics, what ships were destroyed, and the following report stated that the Daleks had seemed single minded in their attack on the colony. Realising their new enemy were not going to go away, the council authorised the mobilisation of their fleets, and prepared an android and clone army to help destroy them.

What they did not know was that the war would last for four hundred years.


	13. Chapter 13

**The Dalek War - Part Two.**

**The Problem with the Scout ship.**

* * *

The war had been on for 23 years, and the humans had won half their battles with the Daleks, and sometimes they drove the Daleks away from what had been their front lines, or they laid down traps that saw the Daleks lose a hatchery complex, or a shipyard, but the war dragged on. Though they had made ground work into understanding how the Daleks worked, and what their tactics were. When the war had been declared, a fleet of TARDISes were sent back through time after the planet Skaro was discovered to investigate the Daleks and how they had come to exist. They were not to have any contact with either the Kaleds or the Thal peoples fighting on the planet surface, but they were to study both races to assess them. The TARDIS commanders were given another assignment; place a collapser bomb on all the planets of the solar system, and place it in a Dimension pocket.

The Humans could have destroyed Skaro there and then, but they didn't. Instead they waited for more knowledge to come. They found that when the Emperor Dalek had learnt about space flight and aliens from a ship which'd landed on Skaro, and the crew were tortured and killed for information, the Daleks had decreed their extermination. As their empire had grown and their armies encountered resistence, the Emperor hatched a plan. Flowers that germinated spread their seeds to continue the species. The Emperor commissioned the idea; seeds containing Dalek DNA with a matter-energy booth to create a new paradigm, so then the Daleks would continue to survive, but also begin empires somewhere else.

When the humans had met them, the Daleks had had their empires for two thousand years, spreading their seeds containing their genetic codes, imbued with all the knowledge of their ancestors, and the need to destroy and make everything Dalek.

Dag Salander sat in the War Transmat capsule by the tactical scanning station. His eyes were turning towards his captain, and to the main scanner screen. All humans on the bridge of the capsule were gazing at it, their faces drawn and grim. The map showed the green and red lines of the Dalek and human front lines, glyphs highlighting motherships, attack wing fighter squadrons running in stealth mode, War TARDIS squadrons were highlighted behind the red lines, with six more in reserve at starbase D89. The map also showed scans from the wormhole network on Dalek movement, something the Daleks had not yet learnt.

A Dalek scout ship, in a sector of space ten light years behind enemy lines.

In all the years since the Daleks and the Humans had gone to war, the enemy had never learnt that their foe had access to the structure of the universe, and had access to a wormhole network, that they had time travel technology. The humans were striving to keep that out of the Daleks intel.

The captain twisted his head to face Salander. " Report."

Salander read off from the telepathic contact. " Dalek Scout vessel, class B. Crew-6 . Armed with antimatter cannons, ion disruptors and photonic impellers. They're trying to be stealthy, their going to a lot of trouble to remain hidden. Their masking their power signature, and their drifting, but its a controlled drift. They use their thrusters for a minute or less, and the momentum carries them forward."

The captain nodded, " Are they close to any of our installations?"

" Negative, sir."

The captain frowned, " Any indications of what fleet it belongs to?"

Salander checked his readings, but he came back with a negative. " Sorry, sir," he reported. " The Dalek computers are shielded, and their power levels are too low for scans to read."

The Captain's mouth twisted, as if he was trying not to spit out his anger. Computers, even human computers, had their limitations.

" Helm," he ordered. " Take us to the scout ship. Tactical, I want that ship destroyed when we materialise."

The intelligence officer cleared her throat, " Captain, if I may...?"

The Captain nodded impatiently, and ordered the order be delayed for the time being. The intelligence officer stood up, she was shorter than the rest of the bridge crew, wearing a tunic of dark red instead of the traditional blue of the Fleet.

" Intelligence has standing orders to raid Dalek ships, stations, outposts, units for their computers for analysis into tactical information. We have done this successfully over many months, and we have saved hundreds of lives with the information, buying our scientists and soldiers time to mount attacks and work out weaknesses of the Daleks."

Salander nodded, " She's right, captain. But there's also another matter, how the Daleks have learnt about what we've been doing, and they've built in safeguards. Those computers have viruses, we can't take the risk of virus attacking a human AI."

The intelligence officer glared at him. " What about saving lives?"

Salander was about to retort when the captain held up his hands, forstalling any retaliation. " Is there any way to stop viruses entering our computer, short of not capturing one?" He added when he saw the tactical officers look.

The Science officer nodded, " I can have a computer not linked to our systems sir, one we can easily dispose of in short order."

The captain nodded, " Helm," he said again, " Set in a course to the scout ship, but set for a materialisation inside the scout ship. Tactical, I want a spatial displacement to prevent their scanners locating us. Also breakout the stealth armour. Prepare a computer to be linked with the Dalek core."

* * *

The Dalek scout ship was saucer shaped, similar to those used by the Vree in the Milky way, but these ships were more powerful than those used by the Vree, and the humans knew it. The transmat capsule materialised inside the ship in the engineering section out of the way so then the Dalek engineers would not notice them. The capsule materialised with a sigh and came to rest, its outer hull invisible by the phase shift with a randomised frequency so then the Dalek eyesensors would not see through the fields.

Stepping out of their ship came the team of seven. Phased and invisible, with emergency transmats inside their suits, the humans kept in a tight formation, their helmets sweeping from side to side like a hammerhead shark, their scanners picking up everything of detail.

The captain could see, through a dozen conduits, a Dalek connected to the computer. There's a Dalek connected to the engineering computer. He said through his communicator inside the helmet, his frequency also phased so the Daleks wouldn't detect it.

The tactical officer turned in his commanders direction, holding up his alpha meson cannon with a slug thrower on the underside. Both weapons, fired simultaneously was strong enough to bring down the Dalek shields, and blow it to bits. I see it. He replied.

The Captain nodded. Where's the computer core?

The tactical officer brought up on his HUD inside his helmet the layout downloaded into his suits battle computer. It's not in engineering. It's isolated from the rest of the ship for maximum security.

Can we get there in time?

The tactical officer nodded. We could, but it have to be fast. We'd also need to get past that Dalek, preferably without killing it.

The captain turned to his officer. He knew Salander was a tactical genius. So we're not to destroy the Daleks?

Salander's reply was simple. I wouldn't recommend it. Even though we're at war, these Daleks don't know we're here. We can use that to our advantage and steal the computer core and return to the capsule. When we're finished, we can destroy the ship from space before they realise what we've done.

Salanders plan was not appreciated by one of the officers. Susan Campbell had lost her mother and sister in a Dalek raid on the colony of Deimos Minor, though the battlegroup had been destroyed 10,000 humans had been exterminated, and they hadn't been able to regenerate any of them.

I disagree, sir. We should destroy the Daleks, and then capture the core.

The captain, however, liked Salanders plan better. No, we're following Salanders plan.

Campbell wasn't listening. She was already breaking cover, and heading over to the Dalek on duty, ignoring her commander's orders to come back. As soon as Campbell dropped her phase screen, the Dalek saw her.

No matter how many of the filthy creatures she had seen and killed, Campbell always had to fight down the fear whenever she saw them in their mobile lifesupport casings.

The Dalek was pepperpot shaped, and around as tall as a human. The casing was domed on top, with a stalk for the Dalek to see, with two arms in the mid section, not unlike a human's torso, one for reaching out and grabbing or holding things, but also to work Dalek technology, and next to it was the Dalek's blaster, a weapon that saturated bodies with energy that burnt away the nerves, killing the victim in agony.

As soon as she had lowered her phase shift, the Dalek had seen her, and typically it shouted its intentions as well as raising the alarm. " ALERT! EMERGENCY! HUMANS ON BOARD SCOUT VESSEL IN ENGINEERING SECTION! EXTERMINATE!"

The Dalek didn't have a chance. Whilst it had been shouting, Campbell had been taking out her own weapon and fired it point blank in the Dalek's eyestalk, killing the creature before it even had time to shoot back.

Campbell's triumph was shortlived, the captain had reached out and grabbed her. Like her, he had lowered his own phase shift, and so had the others. Now all the boarding party had foregone stealth because of Campbells foolish actions. The captain was furious. They had almost lost their lives because of this fool, and now they were going to have to fight the Daleks without their stealth.

Campbell heard over the comm her captain's angry voice. We will talk of this later, ensign.

Campbell had just been demoted.

* * *

The humans surprise attack was no longer possible. Breaking up into two groups, the humans were now trying to fight their way towards the computer room, hoping to recover the core and their now failed plan, but it wasn't easy. The Daleks were prepared for the humans, and it wasn't long before there was a raging fire fight through the ship. For a ship with just five Daleks since they'd destroyed the sixth, the Daleks were unsurprisingly resistent. Not that Salander could blame them, Daleks didn't know the meaning of the word surrender. It wasn't in their vocubulary banks.

Nor could he blame Campbell for her actions. Like her, he felt an overriding loathing for the Daleks, having served on other ships and cruisers on the front lines, seen first hand the atrocities they had committed, the worlds the Daleks had ravaged. Unlike Campbell, whose family had left the home planet, Salander's family still lived in Sweden on Earth. Whilst sympathetic with Campbell, Salander was furious that her carelessness could end with all their deaths.

One of the others in the party leant closer to him. We're cut off from the Transmat capsule. Salander, on thought command, brought up the positions of the remaining five Daleks. They were using drones - small combat robots to provide covering fire against the invaders, and the other officer was right, the Daleks had cut them off from the route to the engineering bay.

At least we've got our transporters. Salander replied, though he didn't know if the Daleks knew it. They didn't know enough about their enemies weapons and technology, but they did know that, like them, they had matter transmission, though theirs was primitive in comparison. But the Daleks had ways of stopping even that with their scrambling technology which could block even the materialisation of a TARDIS, nevermind the transmats built into their armoured exoskeletons. They had to steal the core now, and that was easier said than done.

Beam back to the ship, Salander ordered. Bring as many of the reserve squad as you can. Also see if we can disrupt the Dalekanium feeds to the Daleks. The soldier nodded as much as his walnut like helmet allowed, and he transported back to the capsule.

Or at least he tried. The soldier reappeared, and Salander could see through the visor he looked stunned as if he'd been through a cement mixer. The Daleks scramblers are on maximum. I can't break through.

Yes, I can see that. Salander growled, though the anger wasn't directed towards the Daleks. He should've expected this. He raised his blaster, and fired at two drones that were too close together, and both drones disintegrated into little bits of weaker Dalekanium. Do you still have contact with them?

Yes.

Salander growled again, now truly frustrated with the guard. Then use your fucking initiative, and call them. Tell them to destroy the Dalekanium feeds if we can destroy them, then the Daleks will be destroyed and we'd only need to deal with the drones, DO IT FAST! He finished with a shout. The guard, startled by the shout, opened a comm channel with the Capsule, and told them what to do.

Major Briers, leading the attack squad, frowned as the battle computer gave the report as they left their ship, the scientists placing explosive discs on the Dalekanium power units. What in god's name had gone wrong? The mission was supposed to be simple. Why had Campbell's need for revenge gotten in the way of the mission like that?

He turned to one of the scientists, who were finishing up on the discs. Finished?

The scientist nodded. Turning to the other members of the squad, Briers waved them away from the power stack. Right, get away. There's gonna be a big bang.

As soon as the squad had gotten out of the way, Briers was handed by one of tghe scientists the detonator stick. Briers counted down from thirty, his finger over the button before he triggered the explosives.

The effect was felt throughout the ship, as the Daleks, who had switched their casings to absorb static electrical energy through the floorplates, had no time to switch over to their other systems. The Daleks casings powered down before the creatures inside them knew what was happening.

The captain reached Salander. Get the mutants to the ship, and get the core out. The captain left them to their work, heading back in the direction of the Transmat capsule. Salander watched him leave with contempt.

Salander reached the core room, Campbell behind him. The woman was disheartened to know her grief had almost resulted in the failure of the mission, and she had joined up to destroy the Daleks in the first place.

In front of her, Campbell noticed Salander was silent. Dag, I'm sorry.

Salander turned around. I'm not that angry with you, Sue, though I should be since you messed everything up. I can guarantee you everyone will understand, your not the only one to have suffered because of the Daleks. I can name you a dozen people in the service who've lost loved ones to the Daleks. I've met too many people who've suffered at the claws and suckers of the Daleks, but you must show restraint. Use your anger when the time comes, not when the mission's about to begin. Keep cool, for gods sake, otherwise you'll die before you have a chance to kill more of them.

Campbell nodded, hoping she wouldn't be slaughtered by Daleks before she'd taken more of the bastards with her.

Salander watched her face through the visors separating them. Susan Campbell was an excellent soldier, well she would be seeing as she'd trained herself to a high standard to avenge her family. For all the enlightenment humanity had gone through, revenge was still something that hadn't yet been eradicated, and Salander could not see it go any time soon.


	14. Chapter 14

**Masters of Time and Space.**

**The Dalek War - Part 3.**

**The Battle of Marxis Prime.**

* * *

For a hundred years, the Dalek race had been fighting the humans, and both sides had come to a stalemate, and only one that could be lifted if either side fought over Marxis Prime, the homeworld of the Visians, a race of technological supremacy that equalled the power of the Milky way Vorlons and the Kirishiac lords combined, but were no match for the Humans, and the Daleks came very close to their level, but there was something the Visians had that both sides were interested in, the Visians had started work on a time destructor weapon, which if used, could accelerate time forwards in a nanosecond, destroying everything and reducing life and technology to dust, and the Daleks saw it as a means to destroy the humans, whilst the humans saw it as a means to erradicate some of the Dalek worlds, but the Visians would listen to no side. The interest the humans had had with them was clear, and their attempts to talk with them properly in a civilised manner had lasted no more than thirty years, yet they had nothing to show from it.

The Visians had been spacefaring for nine thousand years, and they had become complacent in their power, and their technology stagnated. A race of near humans, the Visians possessed incredibly sophisticated weapons and ships that could break off into dozens of sections to outmatch and outgun their opponents. For years, human diplomats had been trying to goad the Visians into helping them with the Dalek war, but the Visians, protected by their empire and protected against the threat of lesser civilisations, would not listen to reason, even when they must have known about the Dalek threat.

The humans decided to play dirty tricks to persuade them, they attempted to falsify Dalek intelligence into thinking they were making inroads with the Visians, which would have, if sucessful, made the Daleks launch an all out attack against the Visians, though the Emperors court had denied it, widening the gulf between the two species. The humans had also attempted to use a Dalek scout ship they had recovered, and sent it close to the border of Visian space, hoping the Emperor's court would see the ship and assume the Daleks were mapping out transfer points for an invasion, but the Daleks had quickly countered it with a diplomatic message, which stunned the human intelligence agencies since the Daleks were not diplomats, and the gullible And stupid Visians had quickly eaten it up and condemned the humans actions.

The President of the Human council had ordered enough was enough, that the Visians and the Daleks were allied, and they must be punished.

A fleet of ships was sent to the Visian empire, and they easily destroyed the Visian ships and razed the colonies to the ground, bombarding them with plasma and antimatter reducing the planets surfaces to glass before destroying the suns.

When the frightened Emperors court protested, the message they received was cold; you are allied to the Daleks, and you no didn't listen to us. The penalty is death.

The Emperor's court mobilised the fleet, but none of the ships was a match for the human vessels, which included War TARDISes and War Transmat Capsules, which were able to dematerialise before rematerialising on their ships and destroying them from the inside out.

The humans cut through the lines of the Visians, destroying everything they could find, killing everyone, and then the Daleks made their move. That was when the humans realised that the Daleks had been sending, in secret, messages to the Visians, saying the humans wanted only to steal their technology, and considering what the humans were doing, the Visians believed the Daleks.

When the humans realised what the Daleks had done, they tried to stop the fighting, but they were too late.

The Daleks launched a devastating attack on the Visian homeworld, and spread a genetic virus into the planets atmosphere, and wiped out all life on the planet within the span of an entire day. The Daleks had been collecting gene samples of the Visian race for years, tailoring terrible plagues that were to exterminate the whole species, leaving the planet wide open to attack, and leaving the Daleks to inherit the advanced technology of the Visians.

The Visian survivors flocked to the humans, begging for protection, forgetting conveniently they had ignored the warnings of the humans for years, allowing the Daleks into their territory in the first place, so the sympathy was limited.

For the humans, the war had taken on a new meaning. The Daleks had access to time travel technology.

The humans had learnt when they'd discovered time travel that it wasn't the same as space travel; everything had a consequence. If you went back in time, kill your grandfather, then you kill yourself. That's it.

The Daleks, with time travel, would be on a more equal footing with their enemy than ever.

The humans despatched and agent to enter Dalek held space, to access the temporal weapon, and see if it could be activated prematurely, ending the Dalek threat.

* * *

The agent's name was Marnal, and he was not a member of Starfleet, or any member of the Temporal forces of Earth.

He was just a wanderer, a time space traveller who wondered aimlessly through time and space, in a TARDIS he'd appropriated, or stole, which was a more accurate description of how he'd gotten hold of a time machine.

He was a renegade, a group of humans who'd decided to explore the universe for themselves and live without the resouces of Earth, something the humans on a whole sometimes tolerated, and sometimes penalised.

Marnal stretched. Now in his fith incarnation as a renegade, athough technically he was in his twelth life after spending the majority of his life on Earth, or in Starfleet and serving through more than one incarnation before deciding to just simply leave, Marnal had dark brown hair, a tanned face, a broad muscular form and wore dark clothes with a light blue shirt.

Although outwardly calm, the time traveller was gazing about the room waiting for the meeting with the officials to begin. He suspected they were making him wait because he was an embarrassment to his people for turning renegade, but he didn't care. He had nothing better to do with his time. They had, afterall, captured him as he was travelling through vortex, depowered his TARDIS, and now forced him to wait. They were trying to make him feel intimidated, make him sweat in here whilst they chortled. Well, they were in for a long wait.

Marnal had served in Starfleet long enough to know how to deal with the officious bastards that staffed it, and he was also aware of the fact he was wanted for something, something important. He also knew he wasn't going to be on trial, if he were then he would have been placed in temporal stasis to ensure he didn't escape from prison. Where would he go? His TARDIS was presently depowered, and there was no way he could use his isomorphic code to unlock the lock down holding his ship here. He didn't have a sonic or laser screwdriver, or sonic calculator to open the door to the room he was in. If Marnal was honest with himself, he would hazard a guess that his people wanted him for some mission to do with the Daleks. If so, then that explained why they wanted him.

Marnal had fought enough of the filthy vermin over the centuries of time travel and with Starfleet, listened to holographic news broadcasts sent into the wormhole network, and rumours of the Dalek advance sent shockwaves of panic into every galaxy they conquered, and Marnal knew his people were still fighting them, still looking for the right weapon to deal a devastating blow to the Daleks.

As a renegade traveller, Marnal had met and fought the Daleks on 12 occasions, and each time he had fought them with out armies, only a pocket blaster and a laser screwdriver. He knew he wasn't the only one either, he had spent too long away from Earth since his first incaration listening as the renegades fought their own private little war with the Daleks, and only when they merely wanted to get away from Earth.

The door opened, and six admirals walked in, including a chubby little man wearing a grey suit and carried a briefcase. None of them greeted Marnal, and he did not seem offended by their rudeness.

Finally the grey man spoke. " Ah, Marnal. Don't you recognise me?"

Marnal had recognised him from the moment they had met again, but he decided to play dumb. Runcible the fatuous. They had attended the academy together, went to the same classes, but Runcible had pompously boasted what he was going to do when he became older, but it was a genuine pity the little fool had needed to look over other people's work to get through the academy. Runcible had always had a political mind, it was the only thing he was even remotely good at, and he had always loved little debates that Marnal himself had never gone in for.

Runcible wasn't blind, he was insecure about his abilities. He had no knowledge of TARDIS mechanics, no TARDIS license, no apprenticeship with temporal theorists, he hadn't gone in for the Voyager apprentice program that many aspiring students went in for to travel the universe, nor had he joined up with the military service, even as a mere clerk, which was more his forte. As a result the man was jealous of the majority of students in the academy who went on, either to simply stay on at home or join Starfleet to do their bit against the Daleks.

Marnal had been one of those, and Runcible had been left behind.

The little parasite hadn't changed that much either, Marnal mused. Regeneration could do a great deal to improve an individuals appearance, help build up confidence to take the mind further - Marnal himself had changed height and appearance 13 times over the course of his regenerations - but Runcible had simply not bothered, choosing instead to keep his fat little form. The same beady little eyes that made him look like a stoat in human form, the insincere smile of superiority...how else could Marnal not remember Runcible the fatuous?

" Runcible, is that you?" Marnal asked, not bothering to hide a faint mocking tone in his voice. " You haven't changed a bit. Imagine seeing you here after all these years?"

Runcible, naturally took this as a compliment, not even hearing himself being mocked. " And you yourself." Suddenly Runcible was all business. " Marnal, you are needed for a dangerous mission."

" Let me guess, the Daleks based on..." Marnal made a show of thinking, " Marxis prime?"

Runcibles eyes shot open in unhidden surprise. " How could you know that?"

Marnal sneered at him, noticing out of the corner of his eyes the others were looking at Runcible with the same contempt. " Please, Runcible," Marnal purred insolently. " I wasn't born yesterday. I know about the Daleks have taken control of Marxis, that they have access to a time destructor and the research that goes with it. We renegades do hear about things like that." He added almost innocently.

" How did you hear about it?"

" I heard the guards talking about it as I was escorted away from my TARDIS. Sorry, I don't wanna see those soldiers court martialed for that, but I needed to know the truth. Okay, I accept the mission. With one condition."

Marnals acceptance threw the admirals, and Runcible off, and the little human could not reply leaving an admiral to do it for him. " What condition?"

" We use my TARDIS. I and two others willing enough to come, and we follow one of my plans to destroy the time destructor. I assume that is the mission statement."

* * *

Even though he had entered TARDISes before, Runcible was amazed whenever he saw a customised one. TARDISes attached to the academy were set in default mode, meaning a white console room with no decoration. TARDISes belonging to renegades, however, were adapted to suit the tastes of their owners. Marnals TARDIS was the same layout of numerous ships Runcible had seen in the past. The console was in the middle of the room with many sides with the time column in the centre which rose and fell, measuring the power drives output.

The TARDIS had a red interior with bookshelves lining the room with books, scrolls, holobooks from dozens of cultures. That did not surprise Runcible, back in the academy on Earth Marnal had loved books, human, alien, it didn't matter. He loved reading books he collected. The beautiful thing about a TARDIS was there was in infinite space for possessions or cargo.

Runcible saw Marnal standing talking with two others, and then left.

The two humans with Marnal were Lieutenant Commander Farrell and Lieutenant Bashir. Farrell was a tall, willowy beauty on her third incarnation, with long limbs, long honey brown hair in a neat bun, with piercing brown eyes showing incredible intelligence. Bashir was also tall, with an olive complexion, wide blue eyes and tanned skin.

Marnal was discussing plans with them, and when they were finished Marnal dematerialised the TARDIS, setting the controls to take them to the time destructor room. As they watched the time rotor rise and fall steadily as they travelled through the wormhole that would lead them straight to the Dalek laboratory, Bashir commented.

" I don't think this is a good idea, materialising the TARDIS around the destructor, then engaging the chameleon circuit to hide us."

" Do you have a better option?"

Bashir sighed, " I dunno."

In truth none of them liked the plan, but it was all they had. As Farrell glanced down at the dimensional stabiliser regulator, she gasped. " Dimensional reduction of the exterior, thats the answer."

Marnal, however was not listening, his own mind thinking things through. He caught the last part though. " What?"

Excited, Farrell outlined her plan. " TARDISes use dimensional stabilisers to maintain the equilibrium between exterior and interior during flight, yes? Well, when we land, the stabilisers ensure the ship lands the right size. Why don't we adjust the stabilisers for us to materialise less than the size of an inch or less inside the destructor, then we can leave using spacesuits to work on the device from there. The Daleks won't even know."

Marnal and Bashir glanced at each other, and grinned. It might just work.

The Dalek defence of Marxis was huge. Composed of eleven battle fleets, with patrols taking place once every half an hour, the Daleks were confident they could defend themselves against their enemy, providing they used normal space ships.

The TARDIS materialised inside the time destructor, and on the scanner screen the three humans watched as the inards of the destructor became visible. Crystal chips and organic fibres dominated the view.

" We've arrived," Bashir nodded, stating the obvious.

Bashir and Marnal were clad in spacesuits, Farrell was to remain in the TARDIS, and maintain a teleport lock on them in case the Daleks found them or in case of another emergency.

" Good luck," was all Farrell said as they left through the main doors.

It was almost artistic to see what, from the outside appear small, but was in fact so big to the two humans.

" Conserve your supply of air," Marnal instructed the younger Bashir as they walked away from the TARDIS, holding two tool kits. " We may be in here for a long time, so we need to work carefully."

Bashir nodded in response.

Together the two men got to work, and together they occasionally moved and shifted crystals and cables, severed organic fibre lines and joined new ones in their places.

* * *

Inside Marnals TARDIS, Farrell's attention was split into thirds. One focused on the Dalekanium detector, built into every TARDIS since the discovery of the Dalek threat, the second on her two co-sabatoers, and the final third on their lifesign monitors and the transporter beam targetting them.

She wished she were out there, but it had been decided she would stay behind. It wasn't because she was a woman, it was because out of the three of them she had been fighting Daleks for a lot less than Marnal and Bashir, though she wanted to learn. Human society had advanced enough for sexual discrimination to be a thing of the past, literally, though some woman believed it still existed.

The Dalekanium detector chimed.

* * *

Marnal was just programming a command on his hand computer, which would relay through the TARDIS comm system into this lot to program a new code into the computer system of the destructor. The time destructor was powered by a fusion bottle, what Marnal was doing was generating enough energy to build up to become super critical, but it was a dangerous job building all that energy up.

Farrell's voice came over the set in his helmet. " Guys, we've gotta problem. A Dalek has just entered the room, judging from the way its going around the laboratory we're in, checking consoles, its a Scientist. It's bound to check the destructor."

Marnal considered. The Daleks hierarchy was rigid; at the apex and in total command was the Dalek emperor, a giant Dalek that ruled on Skaro, connected to every Dalek in existence. Coloured gold, the emperor was a mix of all the castes.

Like the Minbari, the Daleks had a caste system, but the Dalek version was colour coded according to the mutants genetic structures. Below the Emperor were the White Daleks, the Supremes. The leaders of the Daleks, they reported to the emperor, were in command of battlefleets next to the Strategists. The Supremes were where you saw first hand the brains behind the Dalek race.

Below the Supremes were the Eternals, or yellow and black Daleks, as they were called. The Eternals, despite their name, had nothing to do with time travel which made everyone back home relax, but the job description behind the Eternals made up for that. The Daleks believed in racial purity beyond anything else. Anything new, any impurity and it was either destroyed or sent out to die in the wastelands of Skaro, and the Eternals were tasked with ensuring the Daleks did not touch other genes, even to survive. The Eternals and the Emperor had formed the Progenitor strategy with this in mind.

The progenitors had been formed when the Emperor learnt of flowers, of all things, that germinated and spread their seeds for other generations to grow into their own. The Dalek empire at the time was expanding, stealing and gathering together technologies to make it more powerful, and the emperor had decided to create new Dalek races, new paradigms to grow in new galaxies. Programmed with all the knowledge collected by the Daleks, and despatched through a random transwarp corridor to an unknown galaxy, the new Dalek paradigm would then grow, with enough genetic material to grow a new race under the command of a Supreme, who would also be programmed to think of new races of conquest. Indeed, some paradigms had found new ways of conquest.

Marnal shook himself out of that, focusing on the present rather than bad memories. Below the Eternals were the Strategists, or blue Daleks. The Strategists were programmed with tactical knowledge, programmed to take risks and to sacrifice as many Daleks as possible to achieve total victory. Daleks did not care about sacrifice, of any sort. The Strategists also analysed every piece of information collected about their enemies, as many humans would attest too, and used that information to find new ways of achieving their victory on other races.

Next came the Geneticists, or the Green Daleks, and their links with the Eternals and Scientists were obvious. The Geneticists routinely extracted Dalek genetic material for cloning purposes, or for creating new Dalek bloodlines, a problem in itself as the Daleks were so steeped in purity, they were virtually clones.

The Scientist Daleks, or the Orange Daleks, were responsible for engines, weapon systems, but they were also tasked with knowledge gathering and data collection, but the Scientist Daleks jobs also included developing new weapons, forming new horrific psychological weapons to destroy their enemies. Below all them were Red Daleks, otherwise known as the Drones. The footsoldiers, they were the most expenable, and more numerous.

" Keep an eye on it, maintain the transporter lock on us. We're almost finished." Marnal replied. Indeed they were almost finished, Bashir moving around and checking the connections to their sabotage.

Farrell didn't reply, then after a minute she opened a new comm. channel. " The Dalek's gone."

The report could not have come at a better time, and Marnal and Bashir returned to the transport site. " Good. Beam us back."

When the TARDIS had dematerialised, the three humans triggered the device. The time destructor, already overloading thanks to the sabotage, exploded outwards. The time energy shot through the Daleks, and the Visian planet, turning everything into dust and ashes in moments.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES.**

**Runcible the Fatuous - a Time Lord seen in The Deadly Assasin, and had a personality similar to the one seen in this story.**

**Marnal - The Time Lord in the novels, whose TARDIS later becomes the Doctor's.**

**Lieutenant Farrell - Named after Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia Dax.**

**Bashir - Obviously Dr. Julian Bashir from Deep space nine.**

**Visians - Invisible creatures seen in Doctor Who - The Dalek Masterplan.**

**The Geneticist Dalek - Seen on youtube, The Dalek that time forgot. Recommended viewing, believe me. I loved it.**

**Please review.**


	15. Chapter 15

**The Masters of Time and Space.**

**The Dalek War - Part Four.**

**The Case of the Strategist on Androzani Major.**

* * *

The Dalek was nearly dead.

Harnessed to a wall and held within a massive girded frame with a forcefield around it, power cables leading into it, giving it a recharge every two days to maintain its power supply, with a power lock attached to its mid-section to prevent it absorbing and storing cosmic rays and static electricity, the Dalek was hopeless and it could noit escape. Its communication transmitters and self destruct devices were removed, so its options were curtailed. The Dalek could only move an inch or so in any other direction.

The Dalek was a Strategist, but its once shiny and seamless casing was now marred, dented and burnt.

Androzani Major was a heavily populated world, and the Dalek laboratory was located directly inside a tower block. The planet had been inhabited by a colony ship sent from Earth, but they'd broken away from Earth's technology years ago, choosing to develop on their own. There was nothing wrong with that, all colony ships had that choice.

Though the had a good relationship with their cousins on Earth, the people of Androzani Major had no part in the ongoing war with the Daleks, though they were more than aware of it through their contact with Earth, now entering its 213th year, but the people of Androzani had captured a find.

The Strategist Dalek.

* * *

Andrea Meadows landed her TARDIS on Major in the corner of the government building. When the time and space machine materialised before solidifying, its form that of its base, a silvery globe. Andrea, short, blond, with brown eyes stepped out of the time machine, locking the doors.

A bland faced official approached her. He had watched the time machine materialise in the corner, but whatever he was thinking Andrea could not tell. " You are the Earth official, sent to view the prisoner Dalek?"

Andrea grimaced at the thought of being classed as an 'official' when technically she was a renegade, though her ties were firmer than those of others of her ilk. Renegade Humans, especially with the Dalek conflict, were valued, their experiences meant they saw things differently than other people would.

Neutrally Andrea nodded, " You could say that."

The man bowed his head. " Please, come with me."

Rolling her eyes at the officiousness, Andrea followed, her hand slipping into the dimensional pocket in her coat where the sonic cannon rested in its holster. With a Dalek present on this planet, she was taking no chances.

The man lead her towards an office, where a number of people were standing, some of them holding champagne flutes or were laughing. Andrea wondered what they were laughing about when she chanced to see the screen for herself. And she stopped, gazing at the screen in horror.

The screen was showing the blue pepperpot shaped Dalek. A Strategist. The Dalek was in a silver metal walled room with strobe lights shining at it from different angles. The creature that had become a nightmare of humanity since their disastrous first contact all those years ago was held in place with posts in the points of a square with chains wrapped around it.

Andrea took a good and hard look at the Dalek; it was so hopeless looking, and yet, from her experiences fighting the filthy creatures, she knew better than to underestimate the Daleks. The casing was scratched, dented, and it looked exhausted, dulling, as if the very evil that powered the casing was dying out. Then Andrea noticed the device attached to the mid-section.

" What the hell are doing? Why are you celebrating?" Andrea's voice rose to a near hysterical shout.

The party sounds died down as the guests stopped sipping champagne. A pompous man approached her. " Who are you?"

" Never mind that, why haven't you removed the Dalek creature from its casing?" Andrea asked.

The stupid party goers couldn't understand what the problem was. Andrea could see that. She took a long breath and explained. " When we take Daleks prisoner, we strip the casing of self destruct, weapon, communications, and the mutant creature itself and we place it in a protected tank with nutrient feeds," Jerking a thumb at the picture of the Dalek, she hissed. " That Dalek is virtually complete, its got its weapon and tactile claw. What have you been doing?"

The pompous man smiled. He was a fat man with a thin moustache, and his smile made her flinch away, it was a hideous smug smirk. " The Dalek is contained, nothing can escape that room."

Andrea closed her eyes, trying to stop herself ripping her hair out. " That is a Dalek Strategist, their job is to make plans. Believe me, though its from a different caste, that Dalek is intelligent enough to see through the flaws of any plan. It's going to get out."

A woman sneered, her eyes slightly drunk. " How can it do that?"

" Yes, how can it do that?" Another man walked up, the light shining on his thinning but shiny hair, interrupting Andrea could make a retort against the woman. The time traveller was losing her patience. She had to make these people understand.

" Listen to me, that thing," she pointed at the screen, " is a Strategist. It makes plans, spends all its time coming up with new strategies, new tactical scenarios. It may not be a Scientist, but it knows a helluva lot more than you people."

" It can't get out," the man with the moustache insisted, his loathsome smirk not even fading. " The Dalek's fitted with a power limiter. It can't absorb or convert energy, and the only energy it does receive is power we use to keep it alive. The power limiter prevents the Dalek from storing that energy as well."

His smirk, if anything, grew larger.

" It's safe."

Andrea had already gathered that, with the cable connected to the Dalek, but these people had no idea what they were playing with. Leaning in closer, and making sure she showed them the hilt of her blaster, she whispered. " A Dalek is never safe."

Just then one of the guests celebrating, a woman, gasped. " The Dalek's dead."

" WHAT!"

* * *

The Strategist's plan was the only logical one that made sense. When it had been captured, the majority of its systems, weapons, tactile abilities, motive system, self destruct charges, and viral transmitters.

But it still possessed its superior intellect, and it had worked out a way to plan. Programming its life support computer to simulate near death was not difficult, the casings power support systems were inhibited, and the energy that was trickling in was minimal to power a Dalek casing. The travel unit needed a lot of energy to keep it going, not to mention the creature that operated it.

The Dalek programmed the life support system to simulate death, but not by much. Cutting the power to its eyestalk but not the auditory sensors, the Dalek's arms drooped and its eyestalk darkened.

* * *

Andrea watched astonished as the Dalek seemed to die, and she watched two technicians and another man, this one clearly a doctor, rush into the room. The death of a Dalek was always the cause for celebration, but Andrea had a sinking feeling the Dalek had something in mind.

* * *

The technicians and the doctors of the tower had enough experience of Dalek technology to make a quick but informed diagnosis. The technicians scanned it. " There's a bit of energy left, but not much. The life support system's too low."

The doctor was waving a sensor wand over the casing. " The mutant could still be alive." He mused, then he came to a decision at once. " Open the casing, and remove the power limiter. Get a fusion generator."

The technicians, however, had heard stories of the Daleks, and were wary. " But, doctor -"

" But nothing!" The doctor insisted, raising his voice. " This Dalek is not meant to die, not until we've decoded its DNA. Do as your told."

" What about the official from Earth? I've heard already she's giving Mr. Van Statten a headache about how to monitor the Dalek."

The doctor had an over-exaggerated image of himself, and no one, not even an offical from the homeplanet was going to tell him how to take care of a patient, even if it was a Dalek.

" I am in charge down here. Get my orders done."

The technicians looked at each other, and hurried out, only too happy to get away from him.

* * *

Van Statten, one of the most important businessmen on Androzani major, was the moustached man whom Andrea had already found disdainful. The man was descended from the first colonists, and his family had quickly taken hold of many of the industries, but what this Van Statten did as a speciality and a hobby was to research the war between humanity and the Daleks, but also to collect pieces of alien junk - art, parts of starships, genetic tissue, the lot. Van Statten's collection was the most well known thing about the man, it was also his vanity.

And he thought he knew everything there was to know about them, and he was making Andrea grind her teeth in frustration.

Andrea had been forcefully reminded of her time on Earth before her second incarnation had wised up, stolen a TARDIS and made a break for it, but her relationship with the people back home was better than others. Sometimes she was forced to act as a sort of spy, or even an assassin, if she wanted to maintain her good relations back home then some sacrifices had to be made.

But Andrea had something Van Statten didn't when it came to the Daleks. The pompous businessman believed the Dalek he was keeping prisoner, with doctors and engineers going over it was hopeless. Andrea knew the Dalek had been a part of a battle fleet, which had been fighting near Major, but one of them survived the confrontation, without the others knowledge. Then Van Statten told the government, who in turn alerted those on Earth, who sent Andrea.

Andrea knew the Daleks, fought them over the last four lives, and she knew them well enough to know this one was not as hopeless as they assumed.

" Van Statten, please.."Andrea tried again.

The smirk on the man's face was forced as he was trying to control his rising temper. " I think we've heard enough from you, Miss Meadows."

Andrea shook her head, just as angry as Van Statten. " No, you haven't." Andrea snorted at him, a sneer appearing on her face. " You are a fool, Van Statten. Didn't the senate tell you, or bother to tell you the Dalek is to be destroyed, by order of Earth and the High council."

Van Statten lost it, " The Dalek is the prize of my collection."

" Your collection means nothing!" Andrea shouted.

Just then, before the argument could go on, a bored escort sauntered over to the screen and screamed.

Andrea rushed over to her, her eyes became wide and her blood became ice.

The Dalek was free, the chains were snapped as power was fed into the travel machine shell, the technicians and the doctors backing away from the creature. Over the comms. she could hear the familiar grating voice. " Systems restore...exterminate!"

Andrea slammed a hand on the comm button. " Get out of there! Just get out!"

The technicians didn't have a problem with her order, but the doctor did, and he hurried over to the comm. screen as the technicians ran out of the closing room, and Andrea watched in horror as the Dalek changed its heading to head for the doctor instead of ignoring him and follow the technicians. Leaning against the wall, he sneered at the camera, even as the Dalek was now heading over to him, claw raised. " Who's this? I only take orders from Mr. Van-AHHHHHH!"

The claw had grabbed the doctor by the head and neck, and they crushed the man's head to pulp. Then the Dalek glided over to the screen, where it saw the stunned faces of the humans before ramming its claw into the screen.

* * *

The Dalek screamed in pain, power rushing through the systems as the systems repair activated the nanites in the casing, and under the power of the surge shooting through the Dalek they swarmed over the systems, repairing the weapons, outer skin. That wasn't all the Dalek was doing, it was trying to download the computer database of the enemy to take back to Skaro.

But the enemy computer worked on a principle beyond the knowledge of the Daleks...

When the Dalek glided back, bringing its weapon to bear on the camera next to the screen, it grated. " Daleks cannot be held prisoner. You will be exterminated!" The Dalek fired at the cameras in the room before it turned to face the door. The doctor it had killed, the Dalek had looked into his mind, and the doctor knew the door codes to open the bulkhead.

Moving to the number pad in the wall, the claw arm moved over the buttons, inputting the code.

Nothing happened.

Another code.

Same thing, nothing.

After attempting all the codes, the Dalek studied the door. Van Statten, arrogant in assuming the Dalek was helpless and incapacitated, had imprisoned the creature inside a room with a weak metal. The Dalek raised its claw arm, and changed the claw into a laser cutter. Placing the tips at the top, the Dalek got to work burning through the door to escape. It could've used its gunstick, but the Dalek had checked its energy supply, if it fired too many times before ten minutes had elapsed then its casing would depower. There was simply not enough energy for the Dalek to waste. Frustrated, the Dalek cut through the door.

* * *

Van Statten had gone from arrogantly confident and self righteously assured to petrified in only a matter of seconds, the transformation was so startling Andrea couldn't believe it. Andrea had watched grimly after she'd tried ordering the helpless doctor get trapped in the room when the technicians had run out before the door had closed. When the Dalek had raised its claw, everyone in the room including Andrea had stepped back instinctively, then darkness as the Dalek leached everything off from the power grid to repair itself, leaving the room dimmer than it had been before. The remaining cameras had recorded, in vivid detail, the Dalek casing being restored to optimum condition.

" Get out."

Everyone turned to face the speaker. Andrea had taken out her blaster, and was checking the charge on it. Van Statten, showing he was far from stupid, though Andrea would argue with that, demanded. " What're you gonna do?"

" I would've thought that was obvious, Mr. Van Statten," Andrea replied, smiling humourlessly. " I'm going to kill that Dalek, but I can't do it if there are civilians in the tower."

" You can't!"

" Don't tell me what to do!" Andrea shouted back before she lowered her voice. " This is your fault, you idiot. You placed that Dalek in an unguarded facility, left it in the care of amateurs, and your people fell for its trick. That Dalek is out now, and its still trying to rebuild its strength. When its strength is restored, next to nothing will stop it. That Dalek gun is capable of levelling a city block, and its armour and shield is capable of absorbing the energy of an atomic shell. I have two options; one, I let the Dalek go through the tower complex, killing everyone it meets, allowing it to enter the outside world, and then destroy it. The more time we waste, the more time that the Dalek will have to repair itself and replenish its resources. Two, I go after the Dalek now, and kill it before it kills anyone else. That's my choice." All the time Andrea spoke, she was heading for the lift that would take her down to the lower levels where the Dalek was, and all the time keeping an eye on her TARDIS remote control. She might need a way out in a hurry.

" Keep this in mind," she said, keeping the doors open. " You are in big trouble with Earth, because of this. You'll be lucky to celebrate your next christmas at home."

Threat made, Andrea left the man to wallow in his own stupidity.

* * *

The moment she was out of the lift, Andrea carefully took calming breaths. No matter how many times she met them, the Daleks terrified her just like they terrified the millions they met and killed. Taking out her pocket computer, she checked for Dalekanium signatures that were active. Since their discovery and utilisation of nanotechnology, the Daleks had improved their casing technology, and their metals as well. Active Dalekanium occured when there was static electricity running through the metal, and inactive Dalekanium was when there was no static power running through it, like blood running through the veins of an animal.

The Dalekanium scanner didn't pick up anything. Andrea sighed, her grip on the blaster waning, as if the weapon were made from metal that weighed more than it did. She was going to have to play hide and seek with the Dalek.

Fun.

Just what she'd always wanted, coming to a human colony world, only to find the people were thick beyond belief. When Earth had heard about the Dalek survivior, they'd assumed they'd removed the fucking thing from its life support shell, instead it had nearly everything within arms reach to regenerate itself. Oh, when she was finished with the Dalek, none of them would know what hit them.

Pushing the thought aside, Andrea checked the scanner again, and looked for the Dalek. Got it, two levels down, and heading for a computer room. Breathing slowly again, and cursing Van Statten once more, she set off.

The hunt was on.

* * *

The Dalek had been moving through the tower's underground lab for only ten minutes, and it had not met anyone. The whole place was evacuated, and scans of the ambient environment picked up on the pattern of teleportation. The Dalek checked its own teleportation system. Another hour before full repair, and even then the Dalek would have trouble moving through the building.

What the Dalek needed the most was a ship.

Turning its computer back to the map downloaded from the doctor's mind, the Strategist headed directly for the computer room. In its mind, the mutant was frustrated in its failure to not download a human computer, such information was highly valued in Dalek society, but the humans had cleverly stopped the download.

Hope was another emotion the Dalek's creator had purged from their matrix, but it was still there, one little spark in its twisted and deformed DNA, and it flared as the Dalek thought about what it could find in the computer memory.

Gliding confidently, sensors on maximum scan, the Dalek moved forward.

* * *

The Dalek was still heading for the computer room, Andrea saw as she found a flight of stairs that led downwards. Her scanner had confirmed the tower emergency teleport had transported everyone out. Fire safety and other natural, or artificial disasters, were still a fear for humans, so they'd equipped their buildings with a teleportation system that was powered by a generator that was off the grid, and the computer system that powered it was also off the grid. Designed primarily for humanoid or any life forms programmed into it, Andrea was delighted the Dalek had not been programmed into the computer's list.

She praised in her mind the foresight of the person who'd done that, it made a change from the cursing in her mind she'd been doing since she arrived on Androzani Major.

As she came halfway down the stairs - she hadn't wanted to use the lift all the way down because of the risk of being shot - she stopped. What if she couldn't handle the Dalek? Riddiculous, maybe, but still a possibility. Earth needed to know about it.

Andrea dropped the blaster, and then rifled through her pockets before drawing out six square cards. Slightly transparent with a silver rim around the edges, and bearing her seal, Andrea sat cross-legged on the ground and concentrated. As she concentrated on her thoughts, memories of her landing on the planet, the Dalek Strategist tricking the stupid people here, Van Statten's arrogant assurances, his belief he knew best...and now how she was imprinting her own decision to act, but also her concerns and worries, and an appeal from hope.

The telepathic energy being generated by Andrea helped form the cube, building it up until all six squares had assembled into one cube. When Andrea had finished, she took a deep breath before picking the cube up, it was glowing with her telepathic thoughts. It was a hypercube, a message box humans used to imprint their messages in case of emergency.

The cube was, in essence, a miniature TARDIS. One simple telepathic impulse would activate the molecularly printed wormhole generator, it would instantly materialise on Earth in a second. This cube was Andrea's contingency plan. It would be simple to disassemble it when she no longer required it, but if that Dalek shot her, then she would never be able to send it off. Andrea sat back down and concentrated on the cube, and opened her mind to the programming built in, programming a simple telepathic algorithm into the transport codes. If the cube lost her living mind, the cube would then automatically leave. Andrea swallowed nervously as she pocketed the cube in her pocket, there was no way she could describe her fear of death. Ever since the discovery of regeneration, humans were now practically immortal, but that immortality was not permanent, it simply postponed death. Daleks, however, when they killed someone then they killed permanently. Their weapons dialled down their settings without distinegrating the body, burning away the nerve endings.

The TARDIS, attuned to her pilot's biological state, would catch her mind and soul, and then clone a new body for her with the genetic material stored inside the gene bank, but it was still a painful thought, thinking about her own death...

Andrea shrugged off the feeling, and picked up her blaster, and moved on.

* * *

Finding the Dalek was easier than Andrea thought, and when she faced the evil loathsome creature, she froze. The Dalek saw her, the light shining on the now repaired casing.

" YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" It screeched.

Swallowing, she replied, " I don't think so. Your systems are still restoring, meaning your shields are compromised. One blast through your eyestalk will kill you stone dead." Andrea ducked as the Dalek fired at her, but she dived out of the way. " Big mistake Dalek," she sneered, raising her blaster. " Weapons are also weak as well, side effect of draining so much power. It would take a day for your entire casing to be fully repaired."

She raised her blaster, and shot the Dalek. It exploded, the top half of the casing flying upwards and the creature inside was exploded with it.

* * *

Van Statten was held in cuffs pending a trial back home on Earth, and he was going with Andrea in the TARDIS. Andrea had already said her goodbyes and as they stepped into the time machine, it disappeared.

But the war continued.


	16. Chapter 16

**The Masters of Time and Space. **

**The Dalek War - Part Five. **

**The Attero Device. **

* * *

Throughout Earth space, or Earth held space, there were laboratories and observatories held within pocket universes. The war, now entering its 300th year, was now taking its toll on both sides. For the Daleks, it meant the development of more progenitors, for which meant more genetic material. Each laboratory that held captured pieces of Dalek technology - ships, debris from killcruisers, shattered or burnt out casings, transolar discs, transwarp cores and coils, or remnants of them at least, and transmat capsules, commented on the diversity of Dalek technology.

Each Dalek progenitor was programmed to develop Daleks of the known castes, but each Progenitor created one Supreme, which was answerable to the Emperor himself, and the Supreme had been tasked with ensuring the spread of their species through unknown galaxies. The Dalek paradigm would then use the resources at hand, and if the devices landed on inhabited worlds, then the Daleks would trick them into giving them resources, which the Daleks would then use to create a new Dalek army and battlefleet to conquer the galaxy, and then turn their attention outwards.

All except one paradigm.

Arriving on a planet with a toxic atmosphere without many resources, and even fewer planets in the system with it, and just habitable enough for the Daleks to live and survive on for a time. The Daleks then found that there were few resources here for them to develop a starship, and to take the progenitor with them. The Daleks were desperate; there were only six of them, and without a decent and renewable supply of minerals there was no possibility of the Daleks developing into a developing race, and the progenitor was vital for their plans. Building a hastily prepared base, the Dalek Supreme and the Scientist devised a plan to use their transwarp technology to simply teleport from their toxic world to another planet. It took the new paradigm a year to build the capsule they planned to use. When they tested it, they found the capsule allowed them to cross light years in any direction they wanted. The Daleks took the progenitor with them, and they transmatted themselves to a random planet.

The planet was inhabited with a humanoid species, and a heavily industrialised planet in its atomic age. The transmat capsule then tracked the mineralogical deposits on the planet, and the six Daleks then built a complex on the planet, where they developed a genetic regenerator with technology stolen from the aliens living on the planet. In the complex, the Daleks constructed and refined their capsule technology. It had served them well, and far more superior than a saucer was. The Daleks used the progenitor to create a Dalek army, and they studied the alien race, growing their forces as they went before they took over. When the time was right, the Daleks captured members of the alien species, studying their genetic structure, analyising their psychology. The data was sent to the Supreme, who decided their fate. The aliens were a warlike species, and the Dalek army could easily destroy them with psychological horrors, the Supreme ordered a pathogen to be created to destroy a half of the species, and reduce their numbers.

For the aliens, when the pathogen was released, millions were exterminated before the Daleks emerged and they exterminated millions of aliens. Those who survived were held by the tradtional Dalek means; mass exterminations follwed by absolute suppression of the survivors. The Supreme and his science advisors and strategists took the victory in their stride, and they used the transmat capsule technology to reach the other bodies in the alien's solar system, because the aliens lacked the technology to build a starship. As the Transmat capsules were being utilised by the Daleks and their alien slave workers, the Supreme realised the key to their Paradigm's success was the capsule technology itself, modelled on the capsules built and used as weapons of war by their human enemies.

With their capsules, the Daleks could spread Daleks to other worlds, build complexes to draw in more capsules and Daleks for cloning and creating a Dalek occupation army for the worlds they intend to conquer. When the Daleks revealed themselves, either deliberately or by surprise, they could destroy the species.

That was the theory before the Supreme chose a different means.

A capsule could land on a planet, reasonably advanced and peaceful, rich in minerals, and the Daleks that emerge could be a Geneticist, a Scientist, a Drone, and a Strategist. Claiming to be the only members of their species alive after a great catastrophe, the Daleks would then start brainwashing the aliens they encountered to give them access to their resources, in return they would help solve that species problems. If that race was involved in some kind of interstellar war, the Daleks could help them with their superior weapons and technology, or they could develop a genetic disease to use on said race. That way the Daleks would be accepted into the society of the aliens they had 'saved.' In reality, that Daleks would in fact be building a massive Dalek army, which would be strengthened by the genetic race bank brought through into the capsule.

The alien species, unaware of the Daleks reproducing, would go on with their lives, and would take drugs the Daleks would give them. The drugs came from the science of Davros, but also from the sciences of various other races the Daleks had conquered, whose knowledge was encoded in the progenitor itself. The drugs would increase the lifespans, conquer diseases, and the Daleks would help with famine problems by using the bodies of the dead, without the knowledge of the aliens of course. The humanoid form made an excellent concentrated protein, and any crop grown on the planet would be impregnated with the same drugs, which would cause severe cases of sterility which not be noticed until decades later.

The Daleks favoured this plan, mostly because with trading foodstuffs without the alien races in their new home aware of their race or its history, they would not be suspicious. The galaxy this particular paradigm found themselves in was wracked with all sorts of problems like famine, disease, and war. The Supreme's plan was to impose order on the galaxy, and there was no way the Dalek leader could see that same order being created by building a fleet of raiders to destroy everything. That would merely escalate the problem, besides Daleks did have it in themselves to be devious and treacherous. With transwarp sensor technology the Daleks studied various worlds where the problems of war, disease, and famine had become so great they spread to other planets in their sector, some of them spreading more than two to four hundred light years in every direction.

It took the Daleks a decade to finalise the preparatory work into their silent takeover of the galaxy, when they finished they despatched four capsules into distant corners of the galaxy, their destination having been evaluated by transwarp sensors. When they arrived, the people's of the planet were frightened until the Daleks made overtures of peace, and carefully took control of the minds of the people that met and negotiated with them over time.

* * *

Sayomin 3, the homeworld of the Heloox race had been the brunt of a brutal and vicious conflict between six highly advanced but violent races, and the Heloox themselves had been taking heavy casualties, so much so they moved their cities underground to protect themselves. When the Daleks arrived, the Heloox believed they were done for, they knew nothing of the species that had arrived.

The Dalek Strategist took stock of the mission objectives, and sent a signal back to their planet, informing the Supreme Dalek they had arrived safely before it analysed the aliens problems. The war had ravaged the planet, the Heloox had spent the last two generations trapped underground. Daleks, because they needed neither sunlight or air, didn't have a problem with living and working underground, but the Heloox were a vital component of their plan. The building of the Dalek complex was out of the question for the time being, the Strategist decided. They had to solve the problems of the aliens first.

The Geneticist and Scientist Daleks examined the Heloox, and the Scientist devised a power armour battle suit to augment the Heloox into becoming formidable warriors, constructed with Dalek technology, and featuring a primitive version of Dalek shield and weapon technology. The Daleks were not concerned with the Heloox taking their technology against them, the Daleks had installed a computer program to prevent their weapons being used on Dalekanium alloy.

The Geneticist took Heloox DNA, and augmented it, making the aliens stronger, faster, more powerful and smarter too, not as smart as the Daleks themselves of course, but smart enough to use ingenuity and deadly intelligence in battle. The Dalek Geneticist also studied the DNA of the Heloox, and the alien races that were fighting over the Heloox planet to create the genetic viruses needed to wipe them out or enslaves them.

The Scientist Dalek and the Drone Dalek, under orders from the Strategist Dalek, helped create a powerful energy beam particle cannon for the defence of Sayomin 3, in truth a Dalek pulsar cannon, used in their spaceships to destroy alien vessels in battle or defence of planets. Powered by a subspace capacitor, the pulsar had a near inexhaustible energy supply, and a devastating range. The weapon also featured a matter transmuter to change the molecular structure of any materials into something else, for instance titanium atoms could be transmuted into pure glass, or even uranium. In the case of glass, obviously in circuits there would be no electrical energy, in a hull the glass would shatter under any hit from a missile or torpedo. Uranium was obvious, in the radioactivity the aliens on the ship would be exterminated before they knew what was happening.

Another matter transmuter was constructed, and placed in a satellite ready for deployment, but it would not be deployed until the war was finally and successfully ended. In actual fact, the Daleks used the matter transmuter not as a weapon, but as a means to ensure a steady supply of metals and chemicals for their never ending war efforts. This matter transmuter was designed as a contingency plan in case the Heloox learnt the truth of the Daleks too soon, if so then the Daleks would convert the carbon atoms of the buildings that would be constructed as soon as the war ended into uranium.

When the races arrived at the planet, the Dalek Drone, who had been training the soldiers in the use of their new power suits, destroyed half of the surprised alien forces before leading them into battle personally. The six races technologies, as already mentioned, posessed advanced technologies, but against a Dalek those technologies were worthless, and the Drone returned practically intact. Triumphantly the Daleks and the Heloox plundered the technologies of the dead races, for different purposes of course. In the five years since their arrival on Sayomin 3, the Daleks had said they were the last of their species, that they merely wished to explore the universe and develop their knowledge, but the Daleks also mentioned they could reproduce via cloning. The Heloox, having been given great gifts by the Daleks, believed them. In the time afterwards, the Heloox, with Dalek guidance helped liberate the other races who were under constant attack by the six races, giving them the same basic hardware the Daleks had given them.

Seeing this as their golden opportunity, the Daleks started to work on the food stage of their invasion plan. They bought dozens of large areas of land, and turned them into growing lands and factories, where teleportation would transfer the dead to them. The dead bodies were pulped and sifted, until they ended up with large quantities of proteins. With protein and grains, the Daleks impregnated them with the viruses to render their victims infertile and hopeless when the main battles commenced. In the case of the six races, the Daleks battered them down so severely they could not do anything when a Dalek army conquered them, and took control of their empires, something that surprised them because they had assumed the Daleks they had met were the only ones of their kind. The Daleks had spread that rumour since they had appeared in the galaxy.

This army of Daleks originated from the Dalek homeworld of the galaxy.

The Surpreme had approved of the plan of his Strategist in this site, and he had ordered an army to be prepared when samples of the six races DNA and their technologies arrived on their new world for evaluation. Arriving by Transmat capsule in secret, the Daleks exploded a bioweapon in the atmosphere, and half of the population was wiped out before any distress message could leave their worlds. The Daleks then moved in and wiped out the aliens left, and took their remaining technologies and their planets for themselves.

For the Heloox and the other races aided by the Daleks, none of this was known unsurprisingly. Rather they saw the Daleks as benevolent benefactors, they had been given drugs to increase their lifespans, remove and cure sicknesses and diseases, and they were helping the species bombed constantly by the six warlike races. For close to twenty years, the Daleks stayed inside their complex, and still maintaining their small numbers they rarely came out in numbers greater than five or six Daleks.

In truth, on all the planets in this sector of six hundred square light years, there were Daleks being grown in vats, although to the eyes of their alien 'allies' the cloning technique was slow, and on all Daleks there seemed to be no fewer than a dozen or twenty or even, in rare cases, thirty or forty Daleks. The Sayomin occupation ended when the Heloox and the other races started to see the drop in the birth rate and the mysterious accidents that seemed to befall their people. Realising their benefactors were more evil than the races they had been frightened of, they marched on the Dalek bases, but the Daleks retaliated by using their matter transmuter weapon and transmuted every carbon atom into uranium. Poisoned, the peoples in that sector were exterminated. The planets theirs, the Daleks worked on constructing their mega-cities and transmat platforms to despatch the next Dalek armies into the galaxy.

Unlike other Dalek paradigms which simply gave birth to Dalek soldiers and built ships in a pattern, this paradigm of Dalek was patient. The sector of space they were in took a decade for the Daleks to spread. It wouldn't always be like this, of course, this was simply a means to an end to develop their forces and the Daleks worked very hard to build their strengths. They could have constructed a massive space fleet, but the Supreme Dalek decided against it, although the Primary Sector where the Supreme himself occupied did have a battlefleet of warships and cruisers, and the Strategists who commanded the occupation forces were permitted to have their own battlefleets if they desired, an option presented by the Supreme, although the Supreme wished only for transmat capsules to be used. The transmat capsules were being spread throughout the galaxy like seeds, some of them landing on uninhabited worlds or moons, where they established colonies on their surfaces to take over the solar system they were in.

The transmat capsules that landed on planets that were inhabited followed the Sayomin strategy or a variation which stated the Daleks pretended they were the last of their kind, and would give great gifts to make them all powerful whilst being given the resources necessary to build a mighty Dalek army to spread over the galaxy.

One capsule landed on world populated by a warlike species known as the Ulians, a race as dangerous as the Daleks themselves were, but significantly less advanced. Possessing space travel, they had swarmed across their section of the galaxy, conquering everything in sight, but the Ulians were like the Viking raiders of Old Earth, who simply raided and pillaged taking what they wanted and violating everything else, and undertook extensive genetic engineering. The Daleks and the Ulians had fought each other in a brutal war with space ships, and a capsule landing on their planet without their knowledge was something the Daleks had planned.

Hidden, the Daleks established a complex, set up a production line and genetic bank to create an army, and they emerged, exterminating everything on the planet, but that was not the only weapon these Daleks possessed. They too used a matter transmuter, and they altered the atmosphere of the planet into a toxic gas killing everyone and everything on the planet.

The human race only discovered this paradigm when they noticed that seven galaxies had fallen to the Daleks, and only one paradigm was responsible. That was remarkable in itself. Most paradigms spent decades conquering one galaxy at a time, but this distant paradigm of Daleks had conquered it in just twenty years, and the achievement itself had been reported back to Skaro, and other paradigms realising the brilliance behind it started to construct their own transmat capsules, and sent them to distant galaxies, but they didn't have the experience of the lonely paradigm sent to that galaxy, and so their progress was slowed down.

It may have been slowed down, but it was progress nevertheless, and it was enough to draw the attention of a wandering traveller from Earth, and when that traveller sent a report before investigating that Daleks were being seen moving systems much too fast for battlefleets, it was enough for Earth to take an interest. The traveller sent another message a day later, and despatched sensor information about the Transmat capsule technology. Horrified the Daleks had a technology obviously modelled on their own, the humans took the information but they didn't act on it by going out into the galaxies under threat to destroy them, that would not work. Instead they worked on methods of tracking them, fortunately that was not the problem. The difficult part was arranging the defences. That was when a human had a suicidal plan to divert a capsule as it was in transit to a world under human control, there they could destroy the Daleks and capture the capsule itself. In theory the plan seemed flawless, but there was one problem, what was to stop the Daleks from re-entering their capsule and leaving?

The answer was simple, they would do what they had done to the subspace domain the races in their own galaxy. With access to the structure of the universe and the building blocks, the humans had managed to create a moat, dead space around their territories. No race in their right mind would enter it because the gravitational eddies that riddled that kind of space did not exist, and there were no beacons.

With the Daleks, it was another matter. The Daleks themselves were aware of this domain of subspace, but they didn't use it for the exact same reasons the humans did. Instead they used a domain of subspace that was considerably lower, allowing them to cross intra-galactic distances without worry. The humans captured one of the transmat capsules, killing the Daleks inside it and destroying the gene bank contained inside. With access to the technology, the humans discovered the Dalek subspace frequency, allowing them to be able to track them through transwarp space, and destroy them easily by destroying their conduits. For 10 years, Humanity used this knowledge, destroying one Dalek fleet after another, not individual starships, but whole fleets of ships, and it gave the humans the knowledge they had been seeking; the complete whereabouts of the Dalek transwarp hubs.

* * *

Six hubs existed within the galaxies under Dalek control, and smaller gates allowed them to send small fleets through to distant galaxies at random, starting the cycle all over again with new races and worlds to conquer. In the days since the development of their own transmat capsules, the Daleks that came from the Sayomin galaxy had stopped constructing hubs except as a neccessary formality for the more conventional Dalek fleets. The Daleks tended to construct their hubs in components, like a model kit or bed and they could simply slot the pieces together without expending precious time and effort on the project. Daleks were fanatical about time and efficiency, and the humans had to admit that the worlds they did occupy were ordered and everything ran like clockwork under their gaze. Hiding their hubs in nebulas or near the gravity wells of dead stars, the Daleks were able to protect their ships with their superior ant-gravity technology.

But the humans were working on a means to destroy the whole lot and bring their empire to a grinding halt.

* * *

The TARDIS was convulsing.

Inside it were eight people, six of them clustered around the bucking console. All around them, ringing in their ears, was a distant bell that was clanging with urgency that increased every second.

" It's some kind of interference in the energy system, some kind of subspace interference is being blasted through the vortex." One scientist shouted over the din.

" What's causing it?"

The scientist, a mere boy in his first life, shook his head. " I don't know," he replied, staring at his screen. He paled. " My god." He whispered, unable to believe what he was seeing before he looked up. " There's an energy build-up in the power core and the temporal field generator in the exterior shell." He frantically stabbed at his controls, trying to stop the overload. It didn't work, and the scientist cursed angrily. " Damn it," he whispered. " I can't stop it. It's impacting on our other systems."

The time rotor stalled, and everyone stopped and stared. The rotor itself was connected to the power core of a TARDIS, it monitored the power systems and the engines of the time ship. Before their eyes, the rotor glowed gold-white, and it was growing brighter and brighter. There was a near deafening sound as well, not helped by the cloister bell.

The kid scientist shook his head. " No way we can shut it down now, the core is overloading."

The chief scientist closed his eyes and gulped before regaining composure. " Okay, we're evacuating the TARDIS. Bring the emergency kit, and prepare an emergency time corridor."

The TARDIS groaned as everyone rushed around to carry out the orders, and a hologram appeared of a woman. The TARDIS hologram matrix, adapted from the A.I to communicate personally with the crew, and to remind time travellers TARDISes were not mere machines, but living entities.

The young scientist stopped and stared at the woman in front of him. She looked sick, and mumbling. " Dying- I am dying."

The human scientist growled, furious. A TARDIS was a sacred entity, guiding their people through time and space, for one to be killed in this manner was enough for a human to go insane with rage. Moving quickly the scientist removed a small device from the console and started tapping on the controls on the dematerialising panel.

" What're you doing?" Someone asked. The kid looked up and saw she was carrying an emergency space-time radio set, and the cards to construct psychic cubes.

" Even with the TARDIS exploding, we cannot explode in the vortex. The damage would cripple the wormhole and cause a lot of trouble, in normal space the TARDIS explosion would not be as severe, besides the rematerialisation in normal space would help us establish the time corridor." The scientist spat an obsenity when he was faced with a problem. The TARDIS's rematerialisation was taking longer, he could tell the matrix was trying to help him but it was in a lot of pain as the main body of the ship itself was being crippled. " Finally!" The kid shouted when the TARDIS rematerialised. In normal space, a globe sppeared, but it was a ghost image as the sphere seemed to fade in and out of the vortex. The TARDIS outershell was still convulsing when the phasing stopped.

Although the exterior of the TARDIS had stabilised, the same could not be said for its interior dimension. The TARDIS seemed to be buckling, the corridors shifting. A portion of the wall in the console room had been pushed aside to reveal a small chamber with a blank mirror like device. The time corridor generator was a separate component of a TARDIS, complete with its own energy supply. It was designed to lock on like a wormhole to another world. One of the scientists stood beside the console and the panel started to glow white-blue. The alarm sounded as the walls started to crack, and coolant gases spread through the ship, and the crew jumped through the corridor just as the TARDIS exploded...

* * *

The screen shut off, the lights returned to normal and everyone sitting in the lecture hall started chattering at once, trying to make sense of everything. The speaker silenced everyone.

" The Attero device has been online for the best part of a month, but we have needed to keep TARDISes and Transmat capsules, in fact anything that uses the Time's Eye, out of the pathway of the Attero wave."

The Attero device operated by using waves that generated interference in subspace frequencies, but none of the people behind it had considered how it may affect their own technology, and because of the oversight the humans had lost seven TARDISes, eight T-mat capsules, sixteen time portals, and a time cruiser. Seventy lives had been lost, and that was not acceptable.

One of the people in the audience stood up. " Question, if we shut down the device what will that mean for the war against the Daleks?"

The Speaker sighed, well aware the President himself was monitoring this meeting. The President had a vested interest in finally ending the conflict between the Humans and the Daleks. " The plan has changed slightly, but the security detail has changed. That's why everyone in this room has been screened for bugs and Dalek technology."

Everyone was affronted they had been screened, but it made logical sense. Daleks were notorious for their espionage techniques- the number of times invisible Daleks and nanites infiltrating cells without the poor fools knowing until it was too late, far too late. Even for humans, the Daleks had managed to infiltrate, despite the amount of time and effort, brainpower and imagination to prevent this from happening. The Daleks had made researches into a very primitive but effective form of time travel technology, using their static electricity to power their machines, which they'd developed after a nanite sized Dalek ship miniturised for the role specially penetrated a War TARDIS's defence grid, copied the design of the time engine and simply hid away before departing the ship on a larger Time Station, where it gathered more information before it managed to enter some soldier where it laid dormant before leaving when the soldier was given an assignment when the probe was detected by security. Fortunately for humans, the Daleks had managed to duplicate only a small quantity of the information received, but now Human security was trying to discover the extent of the damage and work out means and methods to prevent such leaks in future. So far the Daleks had not made any headway into fully unravelling the secrets of time, but they were starting to get there. The humans monitoring had already detected spikes in time energy in Dalek space, meaning a solution had to be found quickly.

" The attero device will not be shut down, another plan is in place."

* * *

The architects behind the plan in question met up in a shielded location. " Okay, so the attero device won't be shut down, but how do we stop the device from killing our ships?"

Another person asked, this one sitting at the end of the table, his dark suit rendering pretty invisible in the dark lighting of the room. " May I make a suggestion?" When everyone turned to him giving him their complete attention, he slotted a memory acid crystal into a reader, and at once the lighting in the room darkened as the holo imager in the centre of the table lit up. It showed the Dalek empire, the borders, the warzones, the transwarp conduit routes and juctions highlighted in green lines with large yellow squares representing hubs. Ice blue transwarp capsule lines criss-crossed everywhere, joining world after world together. There was one galaxy where the lines of transwarp route lines criss-crossed together where they resembled a closely woven spider web. Skaro. The heart of the Dalek empire, the ruling point of the Emperor, the Dalek Parliament and the Supreme Council. It had been a dream to bring down the empire from Skaro for years, all that had been achieved so far was simple hit and run raids, scoring direct hits on weapons factories and ship yards, but the Daleks had adapted too fast for their weapons to make a large enough dent, and Skaro itself was protected by inpenetrable forcefields, similar to the fields protecting the Asylum of the Daleks, which held their most insane and damaged Daleks, of which since the war with the humans had increased in number.

An image of the Daleks Master Transwarp hub appeared over the image. Everyone sat up straight as one of the symbols of Dalek conquest appeared on the screen, this thing was responsible for the numerous paradigms, the armies overpowering species, and giving Earth forces themselves a headache as they fought the empire's means of conquering all creation.

The man pointed, and everyone realised at once he came from the CIA-Celestial Intelligence Agency, a group in the Human government who were responsible for the clearups of Dalek breaches of their security. " We at the Agency have decided to take a step forward, and our top minds have come up with the idea to finally collapse the Dalek empire. The Attero device works perfectly, and although it compromises our technology due to the interference during a TARDIS landing or departure, we have decided the best way to get around the issue is in fact to ensure it happens."

" You want to kill our own greatest achievements? No, out of the question."

The CIA member frowned. " To make an omelette, you need to break some eggs. The principle is the same," he replied offhandedly. " Or do you prefer the alternative, that of simply picking Daleks off one at a time?"

That option had been tried before without success. The Daleks grew and grew in numbers that made killing them all incredibly hard, and means of despatching viruses and nano plagues to consume Dalek technology, whilst working excellently in the past, were becoming easier for the Daleks to bypass. The Emperors DNA had been specially adapted to make the Emperor think of new ways of creating new weapons, new defences, and the Strategists and the Cult of Skaro had not helped matters.

The spy carried on. " By broadcasting the signal throughout time and space using our wormhole network, we can send the signal to every Dalek transwarp hub, section of the network and destroy them."

" Then you come to the problem of the Emperor himself," a young girl, barely in her twenties piped in, a sarcastic smirk on her face. " How do you destroy the network when a half of it's been regulated by the Emperor's mind?"

The man's answer was simple. " An operation involving three main plans. A collapser has been prepared to generate multiple supernovaes throughout the empire, including Skaro's sun."

Everyone stopped and listened with mounting excitement. Alien races like the First Ones, and younger races in their galaxy, like the Dilgar, the Minbari and the Centauri used mass drivers, hurling asteroids into planet surfaces to devastate the cities, but the First Ones, more specifically those of the Shadows and Vorlons used planet killers that devastated and destroyed planets in a single go.

For the Vorlons it was a directed energy beam of incredible power, the single blast like a hammer slamming into a world like a judge passing sentence, whilst the Shadows used thermonuclear missiles that burrowed down into the depths of the planet and exploded chaotically.

A collapsar was the latest advance in human mastery of the structure of the universe, where they could accelerate time in the heart of a star, and turn it supernova. The idea had been developed by the Agency and other weapon research centres to destroy the Daleks, and they'd achieved results by destroying key Dalek planets, hatchery and factory worlds, and industrial centres where they would end be incinerated by the x rays which turned the atmospheres into pure plasma, but in conjuction with the attero device, the black holes formed would decimate the Dalek empire.

" You said three plans - the attero device is one, and the collapser plan is the second obviously, but what is number three?"

The agency man tapped a control in front of him, and the control keyed in the sequence imbedded inside the memory crystal, which appeared on the screen. It showed a temporal rift with the symbol of a paradox. " Everyone in the Time travel department has been preparing for a temporal paradox to be generated and a reality change has been arranged for the paradox, but this paradox is special because since our latest advancement in mastering the structure of the universe, we have developed the means to create a way so then the Daleks and everything they've done will be lost in the paradox." The spy explained.

Throughout the war, there had been rumours that the High council of humanity had been working on a time weapon to obliterate the Daleks, but this...It was indescribeable. Each of them ran the equation on the holoscreen through their minds, and realised at once why the agency were willing explode a TARDIS and generate multiple supernovas; the paradox itself was being generated in Skaro's past before life on that now twisted ruined world even began, and broadcasted through time, aided by the exploding power of a TARDIS, which in itself was a temporal explosion, and the power of a number of supernovas, would effectively shove the Daleks into the paradox and lock them off from history.

" What kind of TARDIS do we use?" One of the architects asked.

" Actually, we're going to use six, each one will have a time dimensional explosive powered by Time's Eye," the spy replied. " For security reasons, the full details will be released after the mission. In the meantime the plan is being carried out even as we speak. The wormhole network will bombard the signal of the Attero Device through the wormhole network, when the six TARDISes start to enter the Transwarp hub in the Skarosian system. The supernova will take place in that second, just as the TARDISes dematerialise inside the hub entrances, causing the attero signal to destroy the ships on dematerialisation and the transwarp conduits themselves. The blast from all three factors will collapse the entire network. The temporal energy and the anomaly will make this a fixed event, meaning it cannot be stopped, allowing the paradox pocket the power needed to finally rid the universe of the Daleks."

" What about the TARDIS matrices?" Someone asked.

A TARDIS matrix was considered a sacred and near holy treasure. If one was destroyed by this act...

" The matrices have been removed, they'll be placed in new capsules at a later date." The agent replied.

* * *

Running on automatic, the six TARDISes were moving through the wormhole vortex towards their targets. Without their matrices, each of the TARDISes were just organic machines. Without their matrices, the TARDISes were just robots. Their internal dimensions had been expanded as well, and their walkways, their rooms were just fitting together, and the console rooms were all deleted, save one. None of the TARDISes were unmanned, there was a pilot on each of them, and they all felt nothing. Robots could operate a TARDIS, if the smybiotic system was removed. Fearless and expendable, and sitting on tonnes of explosive, some of them temporal energy bombs containing vast amounts of the time mineral. Others were subspace energy weapons containing siphoned subspace energy within micro-blackholes, running like miniature versions of Time's Eye. There were fission and fusion bombs held inside pocket universes, their dimensional frequency allowing them to operate, for a time, within the TARDIS. When they exploded, the pocket universe containers would become unstable and the energy would rip out of the exploding TARDIS.

Some people may think the humans were going overkill, but they denied it. There was a good reason the humans were using so much explosive force when an exploding TARDIS, and a supernova chain would be more than sufficient. They needed the vast amount of time energy to shove the Daleks into the anti-time paradox, and what better way than by destroying their entire transwarp network and homeworld? The energy levels released were hoped to be sufficient.

No human had really been in the Skarosian system, but the robots didn't care about that. They were there to do a job. The TARDISes, linked to Earth Temporal control, were being remote controlled to materialise in the transwarp hub, all six of them when the Attero device was operating.

* * *

Back on Earth in Temporal control, the President and the Council were standing waiting. One of the operators of the Attero device looked up at the President. " We're ready. All TARDISes have been depowered temporarily, and a telepathic warning has been sent through the network to stop rematerialisation. If the operator does, then they'll be killed." The President nodded. It had been widely broadcasted the Daleks would be destroyed at the risk of their TARDISes. If they all exploded then they would probably shatter the cosmos like a hammer shattering glass. Finally the president ordered. " Activate the Attero wave, broadcast throughout the cosmos on my mark. Now!"

Throughout the universe, the quantum foam wormhole generators started picking up the frequency of the Attero wave as it was being broadcasted through the wormholes, filtering through the layers of subspace. All the Daleks subspace technology started to explode in their creator's eyestalks...

* * *

Unaware of the destructive plan that would wipe their glorious race from existence, a Supreme Dalek stood dominating the round circular bridge of the Dalek battlecruiser. The Supreme, an agent of the Emperor himself, had been tasked with the extermination of an alien race that had been resisiting the Daleks. For the past eight Skarosian months the Supreme had been fighting those same aliens with the most powerful Dalek warship ever built, and in typical ruthless Dalek fashion, they'd been wiped out.

Now they were on their way back to Skaro. The Supreme turned its eyestalk to the engineering officer. The Scientist turned its eyestalk round to make its report.

" Transwarp engines are initalised."

" What was the delay?" The Supreme asked. The warships engines had not operated and main engineering had reported they were dealing with the problem. Like all Daleks in power, the Supreme despised delays as much as he despised inferior races. The war with the humans was another matter. The humans had opened new lines within Dalek space, and the Supreme needed to return to Skaro, give its report to the Emperor, and receive its next assignment. A comparatively young Supreme, he wanted glory for the Dalek race, and he wanted to fight the humans for the first time.

" One of the transwarp coils had been damaged by the last battle. It has been rectified." The Scientist replied.

" Very well. Return this ship to Skaro."

" We obey!" The pilot Daleks replied. Plugged into the ship, their minds were the ship itself. " Course for Skaro locked and computed. All preparations made. Transwarp propulsion shields online, coils activated. Conduit establishing. Jump iminent, prepare!"

As the Dalek cruiser approached the conduit, one of the scientists suddenly yelled. " Alert, subspace inversion."

The Supreme immediately gave orders to the pilots. " Shut down drive." Subspace corridors that were unstable were dangerous, if the Dalek cruiser entered then the ship could explode.

" Not possible."

The Supremes existence was cut short by a flash of bright white light...

The Attero device ripped through the Dalek Empire, destroying transwarp hubs, corridors and ships exiting or entering transwarp were destroyed, but those ships travelling within the network found themselves in now unstable transwarp corridors. The six TARDISes materialised right in certain points of the hub, the key apertures leading to other major hubs in other galaxies dominated by the Empire. Since the TARDISes were inside the aperture entranceways except one, which went right inside the network itself, and the explosion was doubled and multiplied many times over. The Emperor of the Daleks didn't have time to stop any of this when the collapsar bombs generated fast temporal fields within the star began, the fuel centre of the star suddenly disappeared, and the sun started to collapse. Daleks were usually good in a crisis, but in this case they weren't. The attack had happened without any warning.

* * *

On Earth, the President turned to a technician. " Is the reality change sequence ready?"

The technician looked up. " It is, the change will occur when the paradox is fed the temporal energy from the past."

The President nodded. " Good."

* * *

The Eternity room was an innovation of Temporal control that allowed the humans to monitor shifts in the timeline, but with the right conditions they could also adjust history through the means of a reality manipulator, which wrapped the universe inside a net and deleted or adjusted the flow of history. In the room, three technicians were monitoring the paradox that was enveloping the Daleks, adjusting it here and there, working very carefully manipulating the flow of the energies released by the explosions ripping through the Dalek empire.

They'd waited a long time for this, but they'd been forbidden to intervene for fear the Daleks would discover the humans abilities to alter time itself, but with the paradox they were finally working to conclude the war.

* * *

The sun exploded, sending a blast of x-rays into the atmospheres of the 12 planets of the Skarosian system, turning them into plasma before the shockwave turned them into cinders, roasting them. No Dalek survived, those ships that tried to escape through transwarp were destroyed by the Attero wave still broadcasting through space and time.

Then the planets suffered their second death. The supernova, already under tremendous stresses caused by the temporal explosions that were still exploding throughout the solar system, started to transform into a black hole. Even though they belonged to the Daleks, the planets in the system couldn't defy the laws of physics. They were drawn into the black hole where they were crushed into atoms.

* * *

In the past, the temporal energy was feeding another stellar anomaly similar to the black hole. The Daleks would certainly agree the effects of the anomaly was wreaking on the Daleks and their history was similar to whole star systems being torn to shreds by the gravity pull of a black hole. The explosive energy - temporal, subspace, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, sub-atomic, solar and electromagnetic and neutrino ion explosions was enough to make the anomaly larger and larger, but the humans had made their programming of the anomaly so then the Daleks themselves fed the paradox itself. The paradox was simple enough to understand; since it was being generated inside the Daleks incredibly distant past, so distant no life existed on Skaro at this point, there was no life on Skaro at this very point. The anomaly's job was to ensure there was no life, not ever. The anomaly leaked temporal energy, and fed through by temporal explosions in Skaro's far future the energy was wiping out all possible ways for the life of Skaro - from it prehistoric age leading up all the way to the Ages of the Thals and Kaleds. The energy had been leaking through into the Skarosian system steadily for a year, doing just that, but it was a slow process. It wasn't until the energy from the future, joined by the temporal energy cleverly fed into the anomaly from the Daleks own time experiments, started leaking more and more levels of the deadly time erasing energies into Skaro, removing all of the primordial slime's potential.

* * *

In the future, protected by their time armour and time vessels with temporal shields, the humans watched as the Daleks were being erased from the timeline by the paradox and the reality change. It was amazing; the Daleks on the once lush planet Posideex had practically destroyed the planet's once fertile atmosphere and the peoples were made into slaves, shipped and stripped from their families to work in other parties on other worlds, then the planet healed itself and the Daleks faded away...

All through the empre, a similar picture was spreading through the universe - progenitors activating, Dalek armies massing in the skies above worlds, whole races being exterminated...all changed when the Daleks, unprotected by the changes in time, started to disappear having never existed. The temporal dissolution was complete, and the Daleks were wiped out.

After 3 centuries, the Daleks threat over the universe suddenly faded away as the reality change erased the Daleks from existence.

Or did it?

* * *

**A/N. I've decided to finish this half of the story here. All the best for the next part, which should be up in the next few months, when I'm finished with the short story competions which will be popping up in the next few weeks. **

**Next story - The Time War. **


End file.
